Radio Frequency Identification Tags (RFID) are likely to become ubiquitous

Success Stories--Pacific Northwest National Lab

April / May 2005 Volume 3 Number 2

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Miniscule and multi-functional radio frequency identification tags (RFID) are becoming indispensable tracking and inventory tools for retailers like Wal-Mart, consumer companies such as Gillette and for the Department of Defense. RFID tags developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory range in size from a grain of rice to a credit card. They keep track of anything from clothing, blood plasma and perishable foods to military equipment and personnel in the field.

PNNL collaborated early on with the American Textile Partnership and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on efforts to embed the tiny tracking devices into clothing tags. Since then, development activities for the government and internal PNNL projects have led to the creation of over 50 inventions covering novel circuitry, applications and methods to make the tags smaller, inexpensive to produce and able to be read from distances as great as a hundred meters.

In 2000, Battelle, which operates PNNL for the U.S. Department of Energy, formed a spinoff company called Wave ID to manufacture and market the tags. Within a year, California-based Alien Technology® acquired Wave ID from Battelle. Alien Technology patented a fluidic self-assembly process that allows efficient placement of large numbers of tiny integrated circuits across a surface in a single operation. Producing huge numbers of RFID tags at low cost is helping Alien drive this technology into the mainstream.

The timing for mass-produced, easily accessible RFID tags couldn't be better. Gillette recently reported it will purchase up to a half-billon RFID tags from Alien to put on its Mach3® and Venus® razors and packaging. Alien has also scored big by becoming the leading supplier of tags to Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense. In early 2004, Wal-Mart announced they would be adopting radio frequency identification in the form of barcodes for their inventory. Simultaneously, DOD issued a mandate that all containers being shipped outside the continental United States must have battery-powered tags with the contents of the container written into them at the point of origin.

In 2004, PNNL entered into a strategic teaming agreement with VerdaSee Solutions, Inc., to market and manufacture their newly developed second generation, high-performance RFID tag technology with sensoring and security capabilities.

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More Effective Radiation Protections

A PNNL technology developed for nuclear workers is protecting workers from radiation in offices, hospitals, factories and nuclear waste sites. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) is a radiation detection technology that has changed modern dosimetry by using light instead of heat to obtain accurate radiation dose measurements. The OSL technology enables dosimeters to be lighter, less expensive, and reusable.

Not long after R&D magazine selected the technology as one of the top 100 new technologies and products in 1992, the publicity attracted the interest of Landauer, Inc., a leading distributor of dosimeters in the United States. Landauer completed a related research project with Battelle at PNNL and licensed the technology in 1998.

Landauer used the OSL technology to create the Luxel® dosimeter that measures exposure to gamma and beta radiation. Most recently, Landauer has joined with Matsushita Industrial Electric Company to develop a new OSL dosimetry system called InLight, which uses a two-dimensional bar code featuring OSL slide sensitivity making it possible to read the dosimeter from any compatible reader in the world.

Following their success with the OSL process for personnel dosimetry, PNNL researchers began exploring other uses for the technology, including medical equipment sterilization and food irradiation. That technology, which received an R&D 100 Award in 2000, has been licensed to Sunna Systems of Richland, Wash.

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Examining and Visualizing

Three award-winning visualization software technologies developed at PNNL are helping companies overwhelmed by electronic and digital data streamline and "see" the core information they need. Visualization software works to integrate large volumes of unrelated information into graphical representations and maps that show potential relationships. This data mining and analysis approach to consolidating relevant text and media has proven commercially viable in the medical, competitive intelligence and consumer product acceptance arenas.

IN-SPIRE—„, short for Spatial Paradigm for Information Retrieval and Exploration, helps people retrieve and analyze text information by quickly analyzing large amounts of text and displaying related documents and themes visually as star clusters in a night sky. The software has won both an R&D 100 and a Federal Laboratory Consortium award for technology transfer.

Originally a UNIX platform, the software was rewritten to operate on a Windows platform. Instead of licensing the software to external companies, PNNL chose a different avenue and set up its own e-commerce site where IN-SPIRE end-user licenses are available.
http://availabletechnologies.pnl.gov/infotechnology/inspire.stm
Starlight—„ analyzes both structured and unstructured material, such as text and relational data, including dates, times, locations, and sales figures. PNNL signed several licensing agreements in 2004 with a major consumer products company that uses Starlight to sort through its customer feedback to uncover and group trends, desires and customer acceptance issues. This relationship has led to an ongoing collaboration with the company, which is examining other PNNL technology for future adaptation. A major international automobile manufacturer has also purchased a license for Starlight to enhance its competitive intelligence and quality assurance activities.

OmniViz®, Inc. was created as a subsidiary of Battelle to commercialize the OmniViz Pro—„ software developed at PNNL. OmniViz Pro examines large amounts of text, including large databases, conducting an integrated analysis of numeric, categorical and full-text documents to reveal previously unrelated relationships. The company focuses its direct sales efforts in the life and chemical sciences market, but also delivers its technologies to broader markets through strategic partnerships.

Shortly after opening, OmniViz signed a multiyear collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development LLC., to develop new versions of data visualization software, including pathway analysis and drawing features to facilitate decision making in drug discovery and other pharmaceutical applications.

OmniViz Pro has been updated and expanded into a suite of visual intelligence software, leading to more alliances. ISI ResearchSoft, which publishes the widely used bibliographic software programs EndNote® and ProCite®, incorporated OmniViz® 2.5 into their Reference Manager 10 Network Version software. Recently, OmniViz announced a joint development effort with Infocom (Tokyo) on the integration of Auto Net Finder—„ with the OmniViz® software. Auto Net Finder—„ is a new capability developed by Infocom for the extraction of genetic networks directly from gene expression data.

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Transferring Spectrometer Technology to the Market

PNNL researchers have been working to improve analytical instruments, particularly mass spectrometers, for over a decade. Pharmaceutical corporations, environmental monitoring firms, and chemical manufacturing companies are a few of the industries benefiting from these innovations.

The electrodynamic ion funnel won a Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer in 2004 and an R&D 100 Award in 1999.
This revolutionary technology focuses gas phase ions, improving the sensitivity of mass spectrometers. The funnel has been non-exclusively licensed to three companies, two of which remain active in further developing and commercializing the technology.

An innovative aspect of this technology's transfer has been that mass spectrometer instruments (with typically an initial market value of more than $500,000) have been provided at no or substantially reduced cost to PNNL in exchange for access to the ion funnel technology and the expertise of its developers. PNNL recently received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a value exceeding $10 million for further development and application of mass spectrometry to critical life science research problems—€”the largest NIH award in PNNL's history. Capabilities provided by the funnel were an important element of PNNL's successful efforts to obtain this grant.

PNNL's Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP/MS) Collision/Reaction Cell (CRC) technology is used in more than 60 percent of new ICP/MS instruments sold today. CRC removes carrier gas interferences, enabling elemental mass spectrometers to better detect and measure environmentally significant metals, such as heavy metals, toxic pollutants and radionuclides.

To transfer this technology to industry, PNNL first entered into a CRADA with ThermoFinnigan, a division of the ThermoElectron Corporation. After the CRADA was complete, ThermoFinnigan provided additional funds to PNNL to further develop and demonstrate the technique. The technology was also licensed to ThermoFinnigan, and two United States patents were awarded. The technology has now been patented in several major industrial countries outside the United States, including Japan, Canada, Great Britain, Germany and Australia.

All PNNL vignettes were written by Jennifer Irlam, PNNL communications specialist and writer.