Development of a RFID sensitive tag dedicated to the monitoring of the environmental corrosiveness for indoor applications

TL;DR

This paper presents an RFID-based sensor designed to monitor environmental corrosiveness indoors by detecting nanometer-scale metal thickness changes caused by pollutants, temperature, and humidity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel RFID sensor that couples a commercial antenna with a copper layer to detect very small metal thickness variations due to corrosion.

Findings

Sensor detects nanometer-scale thickness changes

Experimental validation in climatic chamber confirms sensitivity

Electromagnetic simulations support experimental results

Abstract

The environmental corrosiveness is governed for indoor applications by the presence of gaseous pollutants in air and levels of temperature and relative humidity. Its determination is a challenging task and requires the monitoring of thickness reduction of selected metals in the range of few tens of nanometers. The present work aims at developing an UHF RFID sensor dedicated to such measurements. The sensor is based on the coupling between the antenna of a commercial RFID tag and a thin layer of copper exposed to the environment. The ability of the proposed sensor to be sensitive to a variation of the metal thickness in the range of tens of nanometers is demonstrated experimentally through exposure tests in a climatic chamber. The results are supported by electromagnetic simulations performed in the case of a coupling between a dipolar antenna and a thin metallic layer.