How Microelectronics and Nanotechnology Will Shape Packaging

Smart packaging was a phrase concocted during the 1970s to describe a fantasy product that would sense some environmental tremor and actuate some package element to trigger an action that would benefit the contained product. Conceptually sensational in practice, smart packaging was difficult to implement. Time-temperature integrators, with their deficiencies, streaked across our consciousness. Quality and spoilage indicators intrigued us. And then came moisture and oxygen scavengers—and imbedded…