Electro-chromic displays find a market?

The company teamed up with SpotSee to create a 91 x 59mm calibrated temperature indication label for cold-chain use: temperature-controlled shipment and storage of goods such as blood bags, high-end foods, biomaterials and medicines.

“With the TempSafe Electrocard, we now expand our solutions offering with a temperature measuring electronic smart-label, a customisable time-temperature indicator solution, that can achieve sub-zero temperatures, as well as visually indicate above and below thresholds with Ynvisible’s electrochromic displays,” said SpotSee CEO Tony Fonk.

The label operates across -5 to +40°C (-40 to +80°C for up to 2 hours) and is accurate to ±0.5°C. It samples every 1 minute (after a 30minute start delay) and runs for up to 14 days. Shelf life is a year prior to activation.

Preset thresholds are 2-8°C or 2-25°C, and an alarm is triggered if it is outside those for more than 30 minutes of accumulated time.

“Ynvisible is now increasingly focused on smart-label markets,” said Ynvisible Michael Robinson. “We have proven our ability to produce hundreds of thousands of electrochromic displays in roll-to-roll format. We can print in several tens of millions of units per year.” That said, electro-chromic displays can be made on single sheet processes for lower volumes.

In addition to launching TempSafe Electrocard, SpotSee and Ynvisible are collaborating on a next generation of temperature sensing and indication for smart labels.

Both companies are partners in the Charisma project, funded by EU’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions program. The project co-ordinated by the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Vienna University, and includes Universida de Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) and Tampere University (Finland), and companies Science Made Simple, Packdesign ID and Trelic.