Printed Electronics Start-up Specializes in Low-Volume Tag Production

Besides its in-house tag production, Mu-Gahat partners with such leading RFID technology vendors as Impinj, Texas Instruments and NXP Semiconductors, to provide stock RFID tags for applications such as archival magnetic tape, item-level tracking, and box and pallet tracking. Mu-Gahat can specially tune the stock RFID tags for a customer's specific application.

Two weeks ago, Mu-Gahat announced its first stock UHF RFID tags designed specifically for tracking back-up magnetic tape cartridges. The company chose to pursue the market for magnetic storage tapes, Baxter says, because the installed base market is in the tens of millions of tapes, "and is showing sustainable growth of multimillions of tapes each year." RFID tags, he adds, "have become an imperative for supply chain logistics, and to ensure data security and compliance with government regulations, so we believe that at some point, a magnetic storage tape without an RFID tracking system will be an anomaly."

Mu-Gahat's new TC10 "202" inlay contains an Impinj RFID chip that complies with the EPC Class 1 Gen 2 standard. It can accommodate a 96-bit Electronic Product Code (EPC) and has 64 bits of user read-write memory. Tape cartridges contain metal and metallic oxides, which can interfere with RF waves and "de-tune" conventional inlays. The TC10 "202" inlay, however, has been engineered to operate in the presence of such materials, and has a read range of over 3 feet (when utilizing a handheld interrogator), even when used on cartridges stored in stacks of up to 10 units. "This is important because most archival tapes are kept stacked in the library and not isolated," Baxter says. "We've tested single cartridge reads of up to 15 feet."

Mu-Gahat isn't the only vendor tackling the magnetic storage tape market. RFID component manufacturer KSW Microtec, headquartered in Dresden, Germany, recently unveiled a new UHF Gen 2 transponder for magnetic tape cartridges that complies with the EPC Class 1 Gen 2 specification and employs NXP's Ucode G2X ICs. The transponder has 512 bits of user memory and is designed for a 10-year lifetime once converted into a media bar-code label, according to KSW Microtec.

But to the best of his team's knowledge, Baxter says, Mu-Gahat's magnetic storage tape tags provide better read range performance for both single and stacked cartridge reads. "In addition," he states, "we've incorporated unique changes to our design based upon input received by industry professionals, cassette manufacturers, label converters and end users that differentiate us from our competition."

Mu-Gahat currently has several customers signed up for its services, including Kovio, a privately held Silicon Valley company that's developing a new category of semiconductor products using printed silicon electronics and thin film technology. (At this time, Mu-Gahat is unable to discuss the application the two companies are working on.)

Over the next six to 12 months, Mu-Gahat intends to focus on the continued development of laser-based manufacturing technologies and products for the RFID, flexible circuits and associated markets. The company soon plans to launch a series of HF inlays.