University of Cape Town (UCT) spin-out firm PST Sensors has partnered with Norwegian memory products provider Thin Film Electronics to develop a printed sensor system to monitor the temperature of perishables, such as food and pharmaceuticals.

UCT said in a statement on Tuesday that the printed sensor system for perishables packaging could be manufactured in high volumes at a significantly lower cost than traditional silicon microelectronics. It would monitor individual packages to ensure that their contents have been kept at optimal temperature.

The announcement follows PST Sensors’ recent introduction of joint developments in thermal imaging and sensor imaging technology that could increase efficiency and safety in a number of industries, including food, pharmaceutical packaging, retail, transport, as well as marketing and advertising.

“Our work with Thin Film has the potential to unlock significant new market opportunities and is an excellent example of the transformative impact that printed electronics will have on the entire supply chain,” said founder and chief strategy officer of PST Sensors Margit Härting.

She added that for many applications it was important to know not only the average temperature, but also its distribution. “This isn’t possible using conventional sensors, especially over a large area or an oddly shaped surface,” Härting noted.

Thin Film CEO Davor Sutija said that the combination of printed addressable memory and a PST temperature sensor created a new category of integrated system - inexpensive, intelligent and able to offer information on temperature on a per item basis, something he said was not currently possible owing to manufacturing and material cost restrictions.

The first demonstration prototype is expected this year.

PST Sensors is a spin-off company of the UCT’s NanoSciences Innovation Centre.

In November, PST and UCT received the Best in Show Award at the 2011 Printed Electronics USA Conference in Silicon Valley, California, for presentation of a large-area temperature sensor.

This was their second major award, following their 2010 Printed Electronics Europe Academic R&D Award.

While conventional electronic temperature sensors could measure temperature at a specific point only, the large-area sensors developed by UCT and PST could be printed onto a container, or wrapped around it to measure the average temperature over a large volume.

Codirector of the NanoSciences Innovation Centre professor David Britton explained that taking an average over a large area made the temperature reading more stable, avoiding the influence of hot or cold spots and poor thermal contact with the object whose temperature is being measured.

The team also displayed a thermal-imaging mat in Silicon Valley. The technology had many potential applications in advanced engineering, particularly in the aerospace sector. There also lay significant potential in chemical processing and nuclear engineering, to monitor the process in a reactor vessel.

Härting, who is also an associate professor in physics at UCT, said PST was investigating uses in health care and that the NanoSciences Innovation Centre was working with a broader consortium that included members of the Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT.