Flexible printed electronics and their applications in food quality monitoring and intelligent food packaging: Recent advances

The growing concern and demand for food safety in society dictate the necessity of developing intelligent portable devices for monitoring the whole food process from production to table. The development of flexible printed electronics provides one of the most promising paths for this challenge, as this technology brings together the unique advantages of various important technologies. Today, various specific products based on flexible printed electronics have been successfully developed, such as flexible printed sensors and radio frequency identification systems, which are excitingly able to meet various requirements for food safety, including ingredient detection, environmental monitoring, logistics tracking, and anti-counterfeiting and anti-theft. However, the current flexible printed electronics technology is still not mature enough. This review comprehensively introduces the different kinds of flexible substrates, printable conductive materials, and printing technologies involved in flexible printed electronics technology with their respective advantages and limitations, and then focuses on the application of flexible printed electronics technology in food quality monitoring and intelligent food packaging in recent years, intending to provide the latest reference for the development of intelligent food safety control.