Bondfree single-chip RF-ID tag

RF-ID tags these days already come quite miniaturized. For example pets and farm animals can receive an implanted tag of the size of a pill, or wares are secured against shop lifting by extremely flat tags of the size of a coin or small lengthy plastic stripes. These system typically consist of a silicon chip mounted on a micro carrier with a minimum of external components, the largest of which is usually the antenna.

However, Hitachi introduced the world's first single chip RF-ID tag in 2005, proving that it is possible to integrate the antenna and all other necessary components on-chip and thus avoiding having to package the chip at all.

This master project aims at matching the success of Hitachi in a CMOS process available to the NANO group for the purpose of applying it to microscopic free floating (bio-)chemical sensors. A first challenge will simply be to implement a near field coil antenna and rectification to power the chip, and load modulation to send back a simple clock signal that proves that the chip is actually powered.