Hungry? Eat your RFID tag

At Rice University, scientists are looking at ways to embed conductive identification tags and sensors into the products themselves, including food. They are not using traditional printing with edible inks but rather converting some of the food itself into graphene.

The team has developed a method that uses a commercial laser to transform the top layer of an inexpensive polymer film into graphene foam.

Consisting of microscopic, cross-linked flakes of graphene, the foam is a two-dimensional form of carbon that can be written into target materials in patterns and used as a supercapacitor, an electrocatalyst, radiofrequency identification (RFID) antennas and biological sensors, among other potential applications.

The ‘tags’ could for example, potentially act as sensors to detect E. coli or other microorganisms on food.

Image: The James Tour lab at Rice University has developed a way to etch edible graphene onto foods like toast and potatoes. Image credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University.