Date: 05/11/2012

NFC tag chip thinner than paper offered by SMARTRAC

SMARTRAC N.V. has announced it has successfully prepared Infineon my-d NFC chip wafers down to 50 µm for flip chip assembly. The ultrathin NFC chip is then connected to a SMARTRAC BullsEye antenna employing the company's proprietary and patented palladium bumping technology. Palladium bumping enables pure metal-on-metal antenna-chip-interconnection resulting in very high durability.

SMARTRAC BullsEye NFC tags equipped with 50 µm chips are particularly suited for use in the printing industry, as the ultrathin inlays seamlessly integrate into business cards, magazines, and the like. The tags also ease converting processes significantly compared to standard RFID tags.

"We are proud that we are the first NFC tag manufacturer to offer 50µm chip NFC tags in volume production together with Infineon Technologies," said Ivan Plajh, Head of Business Line Mobile and Smart Media. "The combination of ultrathin NFC chips and palladium bumping brings us closer to introducing NFC technology into current printing processes."

"NFC is accelerating in more and more applications. This joint activity with SMARTRAC helps us to approach new markets," said Bjoern Scharfen, Marketing Director of the business line Secure Mobile & Transaction within the Chip Card & Security division at Infineon Technologies AG. "Our my-d NFC chip is ISO/IEC 14443 and NFC Forum Type 2 Tag compliant and offers up to 2kByte NFC user memory. It is therefore predestined for open NFC applications like those addressed by SMARTRAC."

Product samples going to be displayed at Cartes 2012 Exhibition & Conference in Paris, November 6-8, 2012, at the SMARTRAC booth 4M072. Field qualification is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2013.