At present, according to the antenna wire material, material structure and manufacturing process and other differences, RFID tag antenna can be roughly divided into the following categories: etched antenna, printed antenna, wire-wound antenna, add antenna, ceramic antenna, etc., the most commonly used antenna manufacturing process is the first three.

Etching method

Etching method, also known as imprinted etching method, first covers a layer of copper or aluminum of about 20mm thickness on a substrate carrier, and additionally makes a screen printing plate of antenna yang figure, and uses screen printing to print resist on the surface of copper or aluminum, which in turn protects the copper or aluminum below from corrosion, and the rest is dissolved by the etching agent.

However, due to the chemical erosion reaction used in the etching process, there are problems of long process flow and waste water, which easily cause pollution to the environment, so the industry has been trying to find a better alternative.

Printed antenna

The antenna circuit is directly printed or printed on top of the substrate with special conductive ink or silver paste, more mature is gravure printing or screen printing. Screen printing saves cost to some extent, but its ink uses about 70% high silver content of conductive silver paste to get antenna between 15 to 20um, which is a thick film printing method and high cost.

Coil-wound antenna

The manufacturing process of copper wire winding RFID tag antenna is usually done using automatic wire winding machine, that is, directly on the base carrier film is wound coated with insulating varnish, and the use of low melting point baking varnish copper wire as the substrate of RFID tag antenna, and finally the wire and substrate are mechanically fixed with adhesive, and according to the different frequency requirements, winding a certain number of turns.