George Xiao

Title: Printed Electronics and RFID

Dr. Gaozhi (George) Xiao
Senior Research Officer
Institute for Microstructural Science
National Research Council
Canada

Abstract:

Printed electronics is using the printing techniques, such as flexography, gravure, inkjet, offset lithography and screen printing, to create electronic devices. It is an emerging technology and can be used to fabricate simple and low cost devices on any solid substrates such as paper, plastic, rubber, fabrics and etc. This makes printed electronics ideal for the fabrication of RFID inlays, and devices for wearable, IOT and disposable medical diagnosis applications.

This presentation begins with the introduction of the printed electronics technology, its advantages and disadvantages and its major applications. The operation principle and procedures of printed electronics process are explained using the screen printing as the example, as it is the most mature and the most widely used printed electronics technique.

Antenna is the most critical part of a RFID tag or reader. The presentation will discuss how to fabricate high quality RFID antennas for various applications using the screen printing technique. The challenges and the solutions will be presented in the tutorial using the real cases as the examples, including the HF antennas for ID, wireless power transfer applications, and the UHF reader antennas.

How to print other RFID components will also be presented in the presentation, such as the battery, memory and sensors. Future directions in using printed electronics to create RFID based products will be discussed in the last part of this presentation.

Biography:

Dr. Gaozhi (George) Xiao is an IEEE fellow, a senior research officer of the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada.

Dr. Xiao has been the associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement since 2009. He represents the IEEE I & M society on the ad-com of IEEE Council of RFID. He is currently the deputy EIC of Journal of RFID.

Dr. Xiao graduated from National University of Defense Technology, China in 1984. He received his Ph.D. from Loughborough University, UK in 1995. Dr. Xiao has worked in industries, academics and government labs with experiences covering areas including RFID/NFC, flexible/printable/wearable electronics, fiber optic sensor systems, photonic sensing and measurement, structural health monitoring, indoor air quality monitoring, structural materials, smart materials and etc. He has published more than 100 papers in refereed journals and refereed conference proceedings, and 1 co-edited book. He is currently holding 3 US patents. Dr. Xiao is a recipient of multiple awards, including the Technical Award from the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society (2014), Outstanding Associate Editor Award from the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement (2011, 2012 and 2013), and several prestige awards from his current and formal employers.

Related articles

IEEE CRFID James Clerk Maxwell Best Journal Paper Award 2025

The IEEE Council of RFID and the IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification editorial board are pleased to announce the winner of the IEEE CRFID James Clerk Maxwell Best Journal Paper Award 2025. The paper was awarded after a careful evaluation involving the editorial board. The awarding ceremony was held in Valence, during IEEE RFID-TA 2025. Congratulations to: A. Vena, B. Sorli University of Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France S. Cahuzac University of Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, Bonetag Company, Perpignan, France S. Dutrieux, S. Naudi Bonetag Company, Perpignan, France for their paper: Implant-Based UHF RFID-Enabled Sensor to Detect Loosening of Knee Prosthesis Link: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10186456

Read more

Andrea Motroni

Assistant Professor, University of Pisa. Andrea has served in many roles for the council as CRFID Publicity Chair as well on several conference organizing committees. Currently, he is one of the Special Session Chair Organizers for the upcoming IEEE RFID 2026 conference taking place June 16 – 18 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. He was also instrumental in assisting with the council website. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. Outside of his commitment to helping the council, he enjoys rock climbing, hiking, guitar, and music. His favorite quote is “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

Read more