There has been tremendous interest in the areas of printed electronics and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. This interest is understandable, considering that IDTechEx, a Cambridge, UK consulting firm, places the potential annual sales of the printed electronics market at upwards of $300 billion in the next two decades, with RFID an important part of that market. IDTechEx forecasts a $5.29 billion RFID market in 2008, up 7.3 percent on the $4.93 billion in 2007. In 2018, that market could rise to more than $25 billion, according to the firm. “By 2018, the market value will be over five times the size of the market compared to 2008, but the number of tags supplied will be over 300 times that of 2008, driven by the development of lower cost tags and installed infrastructure which will enable high volumes of articles to be tagged,” said Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx. Mr. Dasforecasts that contactless smart cards will dominate until 2009 by value; in 2008, 57.3 p