Fujitsu Releases New High-heat-resistant UHF-band RFID Tags for Garment Management

Tokyo, October 05, 2009

Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Frontech Limited today announced that they have begun to offer the world's first⁽¹⁾ flexible UHF-band RFID tag for garment management that can withstand high-temperature sterilization⁽²⁾. The tag is intended for use in uniforms worn by employees at plants that manufacture products such as medical supplies or semiconductors, in which it is necessary to sterilize uniforms at a temperature of 121℃.

Fujitsu and Fujitsu Frontech have fully demonstrated the new tag's durability by conducting repeated environmental tests under a high temperature of 121℃ and high pressure conditions of 2 atm, using autoclave sterilization⁽³⁾, one of the most effective sterilization techniques.

Utilizing the tags will enable companies to manage uniforms much more efficiently in locations such as plants where uniform sterilization is required.

In order to prevent plants that manufacture items such as medical supplies and semiconductors from being contaminated by microorganisms and other outside pollutants, uniforms worn by employees are thoroughly sterilized in advance. While most microorganisms can be eliminated at 100℃ over a short period of time, in the case of uniforms worn at medical supply and semiconductor plants, it is important to eliminate microorganisms that have a significantly higher resistance to heat. In order to accomplish this, it is often necessary to employ autoclave sterilization, the most effective sterilization technique in use to kill microorganisms at temperatures of 121℃ and pressure conditions of 2 atm.

Flexible UHF-band RFID tags for garment management have been widely adopted by various manufacturing plants with the aim of efficiently managing employee uniforms. Up until this point, however, no flexible UHF-band RFID tags for garment management able to withstand temperatures of 121℃ were commercially available. As a result, manufacturing plants where high-temperature sterilization is required have faced the common challenge of having to manually handle uniform maintenance.

To address this, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Frontech conducted autoclave sterilization durability tests for the RFID tags under both high temperature and high pressure environments of 121℃ and 2 atm, respectively, 100 times repeatedly, confirming that they were durable under extreme conditions.

By utilizing these tags to manage work uniforms, companies will be able to simultaneously scan the identification of up to 100 uniforms after they are sterilized, enabling significant improvements in operational efficiency and circulation management.

Autoclave sterilization durability tests for the new tags were made possible through the cooperation of Guardner Co., Ltd., which specializes in manufacturing and selling dust-proof clothing and other clean room products.

Fujitsu and Fujitsu Frontech will continue to work with Guardner to further improve the efficiency of managing work uniforms that require sterilization.

Key Specifications

Applicable Standard: ISO/IEC18000-6 Type C
Dimensions and Weight: 55mm width x 10mm depth x 1.6mm height; 1 gram
Transmission Range: approximately 1.5m (952-954 MHz, using a 4W-EIRP circularly polarized antenna)
Durability: Heat-resistant, pressure-resistant, alkaline-resistant and waterproof