Effect of flip-chip bonding parameters on the property of passive UHF RFID tags with screen-printed antenna on fabric

Abstract

The substrate material plays an important role in industrialized flip-chip technology of the passive ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification with antenna printed on flexible film. This work presents the flip-chip fabrication and performance evaluation of ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification with screen-printed antenna on common woven fabrics. The antennas were manufactured by screen printing a stretchable silver-based conductor directly on a common woven nylon fabric. The electrical and mechanical connection between the screen-printed antennas and microchips was formed by flip-chip technology, which bridged the antenna with the microchip under a heating contactor with additive anisotropic conductive adhesives, and the effects of heating contactor parameters (contactor pressure, temperature and duration time) on the performance of radio frequency identification tag prototypes were investigated, and the influence mechanism was discussed in terms of the conductivity, the resonance frequency shift and the morphology. The experiment results show that the flip-chip bonding conditions set in the case of screen-printed antenna on nylon fabric is 0.7 N contactor pressure, 120°C heating temperature and 0.6 s heating duration time, different from the case of previous plastic-like thin film substrate, and this is mainly attributed to the compressive and rough surface of the fabric-based antennas. In addition, the flip-chip heating temperature should be consistent with that of screen-printed conductive ink to ensure a stable electrical connection between the antenna and microchip, as well as good performance of fabric-based ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification tags. These conclusions provide a tool for manufacturing large-scale fabric-based ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification tags and characterizing the process quality.