Production and Verification of RFID MM2 Microchip with Bump and On-Chip Antenna

Abstract

This paper describes the special steps taken for the mass production of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) MM2 microchip. Since the MM2 is the unique semiconductor product with special on-chip antenna, it requires special production steps that might be quite different from ordinary electronics processes. In order to start the volume production, several preparation steps have to be taken in advance. These tasks are usually not included in the research and development stage. At the initial stage of the production, the production scheduling and quality management are the most important works. Since the availability of the production line varies by the demands, the production sometimes becomes very tight and it will cause the delivery shortage that is critical for customers. In this paper, the steps for the production preparation and production process are described. In order to confirm the proper operation against the process variation by lot, at least three lots (equivalent to 1 million microchips) of the wafers were produced. Very limited number of the microchips were used for the reliability test and the rest were used as the pre-production sample purposes. The uniqueness of the production steps compare to other chip production is the on-chip antenna (OCA) process i.e. build-up very small antenna coil with specified carrier frequency on top of the chips.