Alliance Rubber Stretches Limit of RFID and NFC Applications

Rubber band company Alliance Rubber Co. reports that it may be on the verge of releasing the first substantial innovation in rubber bands in decades—and it could benefit the radio frequency identification industry. Researchers at Alliance Rubber are developing and testing graphene-infused rubber that could provide a new, versatile material that could accommodate RFID or Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies. The company says it is testing whether applying graphene to rubber could enable the use of rubber bands to block RFID signals, or to enable them—in the latter case, making a simple rubber band a digital source of information for a product or asset that could be accessed via radio transmissions, or by bar-code scan or simply by changing color. The company has partnered with the University of Sussex to study the use of graphene in rubber, and plans to develop intelligent rubber products during the coming months or years.