In 2006, Hitachi developed a 0.15mm-sized RFID chip

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News releases PDF Download(PDF Type, 114Kbyte) February 6, 2006 World's smallest and thinnest 0.15 x 0.15 mm, 7.5µm thick RFID IC chip - Enhanced productivity enabled by 1/4 surface area, 1/8th thickness - Tokyo, 6th February 2006 --- Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT / TSE:6501) today announced it has developed and verified operation of a 0.15 x 0.15 millimeter (mm), 7.5 micrometer (µm)*1 thick contactless IC chip, the smallest and thinnest in the world, to date. The chip is a smaller version of the 0.4 x 0.4 mm "µ-Chip"*2 currently being marketed by Hitachi, maintaining the same level of functionality. The distance between each circuit element was reduced by using SOI technology,*3 which has an insulating layer in the substrate, instead of the Si (silicon) only substrate currently being used. Compared to the 0.3 x 0.3 mm, 60µm thick IC chip*4(henceforth 0.3mm IC chip) announced by Hitachi in February 2003, surface area is reduced to a quarter of the original size. Developments in thin chip fabrication technology have also enabled the chip to be reduced to one-eighth the thickness of the 0.3mm IC chip, at the same time. This significant decrease in size, increases the number of chips which can be fabricated on a single wafer, thus increasing productivity by more than four times. Compared to the current product which was used at the 2005 World Exposition held in Aichi, Japan, productivity is increased by about 10 times. This technology is expected to open the way to new applications for contactless IC chips. The µ-Chip is one of the world's smallest contactless IC chips which uses an external antenna to receive radio waves (2.45 GHz microwaves), and transforms it to energy to wirelessly transmit a 128 bit (1038) unique ID number. As the data is written during the fabrication process using ROM (Read-Only-Memory), it is impossible to rewrite the data and thus provides a high level of authenticity. The admission ticket system for the 2005 World Exposition, which had approximatel...