ST, Bluechiip enter manufacturing partnership on tracking tags

The mems based tracking tag is a mechanical device that has the ability to survive and read the ID of samples in temperatures as low as –196°C and as high as 200°C. It also has immunity to gamma irradiation. Its robustness is said to provide significant advantages over traditional identification or tracking solutions such as labels, barcodes or rfid technologies, and provide the necessary high levels of data surety in the rapidly growing and labour intensive healthcare markets such as biobanking. According to ST, the tags will first be moulded into test tubes and vials for the expanding biobank market to identify, track, retrieve, monitor and store valuable and irreplaceable human biospecimens, including tissue, embryos and cord blood in liquid nitrogen. Other possible applications include pathology, clinical trials, biorepositories and forensics. "The tags will revolutionise tracking of critical assets in a broad range of important markets," said Brett Schwarz, md and ceo, Bluechiip. The technology is based on mems based resonators within a tiny and purely mechanical chip, containing no electronics whatsoever. The tracking tag, which comprises this mechanical chip and an antenna, can either be embedded or manufactured into a storage product, such as a vial or a bag. ST claims easy identification, along with any associated information from the tag can be detected by a reader, which can also log the temperature history of the tagged items.