What are the general performance characteristics of aluminum versus copper in terms of effective read and write ranges?
Bill Arnold: Aluminum for OMRON has always been less responsive, especially for the HF frequency ranges. So we investigated very carefully before making a decision to convert any of those HF inlays that we’ve been making for many years to aluminum from copper. We were very happy to find that with our design capabilities we were able to provide performance that was equivalent to the copper designs that we had out before. What are the benefits of aluminum over copper? Aluminum is probably one of the world’s most available resources, so there are a couple of benefits for a company like OMRON that is highly conscious of the environment. And we consider ourselves a green friendly corporation. Aluminum has better characteristics than copper from a disposable viewpoint, especially if you’re talking about very large quantities of tags that are likely to be used only once or twice and then be disposed either into incinerators or landfills. So aluminum is more environmentally friendly from that
