A 3D Printed UHF Passive RFID tag for Plastic Components

In this paper, 3D printing by additive manufacturing is employed to fabricate a UHF RFID tag compatible with direct integration into 3D printable plastic parts. A standard meandered dipole design is chosen for the transceiver antenna to receive the query signal and respond back with the identification information to the interrogator operating in the FCC approved RFID range (902-928 MHz). The antenna is printed on a plastic substrate with the RFID chip embedded using a face-up embedding process. The printed tag has a read range of 6 m making the performance comparable with conventional UHF RFID tags. The tag can be easily integrated with plastic parts that are 3D printing compatible such as car bumpers, pill bottles, etc.