Powered Cards

Powered Cards represent a rapidly growing application space for any micro-electronic solution in the shape of a credit card. The functionality goes beyond the traditional bank card with display or biometric authentication, and now includes customer loyalty cards, driver's licenses, medical cards, wireless sensor nodes and many other applications. Traditionally, these cards have been powered with thin, flexible primary (non-rechargeable) batteries. These cells offer a lifetime energy of around 12-25mAh, but deliver only low currents, which limit the potential functionality of the card. When the energy is used up, usually in less than 2 yrs (or sooner with added functionality), the entire card must be discarded and replaced - and at a significant expense just because the conventional battery "died."

THINERGY MECs offer a superior solution for powered card applications due to their unprecedented power, long life, and rapid rechargeability. The MEC can be hot laminated and has sufficient power to run a 32-bit ARM core processor within the card, which is sometimes needed to achieve rapid match-on-card biometric authentication. THINERGY MECs can be recharged "autonomously" via integrated energy harvesting, such as Piezo films, RF antennas and flexible photovoltaics. In addition, each time the card is "read" using Near Field Communications (NFC), which is like a passive RFID event, the 13.56MHz RF energy can be harvested to put power back into the MEC (data out, power in). This effortless recharge method leverages the existing RF reader infrastructure around the globe for NFC bank card Point of Sale (POS) readers, security systems with physical access doorway readers, or automotive keyless entry systems. THINERGY MECs allow designers to add power consuming features to powered cards, such as biometrics, displays, GPS data-loggers, wireless sensors and transmitters, without shortening the life of the battery or the card because the MEC can simply be recharged. In essence, THINERGY MECs last the life of the card.