Alien Technology has won the Bronze Award in The Wall Street Journal's recent Innovation Awards.

Alien won due to a special process its CTO devised for low cost manufacture of tags:

"To slash production costs, Alien's founder and chief technology officer, J. Stephen Smith, devised a process called Fluidic Self Assembly that floats RFID chips in a water-based slurry. When the slurry is passed over tag material, the individual chips automatically settle into position. Where mechanical methods can produce about 1,000 tags an hour, Alien's fluidic process can make about two million an hour, dramatically driving down the price to about 20 cents a tag, with the promise of further reductions."

The Wall Street Journal article is available for free here.

The Wall Street Journal has been doing podcasts with backstory about important articles it runs, and this one is no exception. Listen to the podcast here where editor Jon Leger discusses the selection process by the independent panel of judges, and some of the more interesting entries (8 MB MP3 download).

Read more about how Alien's manufacturing process for its "Squiggle" tag has allowed it to drop tag prices, in the RFID Journal article: "Alien Drops Tag Price to 12.9 Cents."