In 2006, Hitachi developed a 0.15mm-sized RFID chip
20 comments
·August 15, 2025rwmj
vlabakje90
It thought it was an interesting analogy, so I looked up the size of a typical sugar crystal. It's between 450 and 600 microns. So these chips are 3 to 4 times smaller than that even.
riedel
I was in a project with MAN Roland and the university of Dresden at the same time and the most important thing is roll to roll printing. This actually works well if you do not need an external antenna. What was the holy grrail at the time was to print also the antennas, get a decent coupling and then actually also do item and not only batch level tracking of the packaging you would print. Particular Pharma was really interested in terms of anticounterfeiting at low cost.
dfox
If you want the bare chips and not full assembled labels the usual packaging is uncut wafer and cutting out and handling the individual dies is your problem.
UomoNeroNero
This is the really interesting Thing!!!! And: how they can have different ROM content (code) for each chip
progbits
Still needs an antenna tuned to the RFID frequency which will be much larger than the chip. It's cool engineering but doesn't mean you can have a working sub-mm tag.
stavros
No, but the chip does usually put a cap on the thinness of the whole assembly (e.g. for cards). This means you can have a paper-thin NFC sticker (which we have now, I guess).
ashleyn
In an early example of conspiracy theories that would eventually envelop social media, I actually remember internet commenters pointing to the previous generation of these as supposed "proof" that the government was embedding RFID chips in banknotes to track people (following a blog article by Alex Jones): https://news.slashdot.org/story/04/03/02/0535225/do-your-20-...
inanutshellus
If I worked for VISA's marketing team I'd want to spread FUD like this and "XX% of dollar bills have cocaine on them; protect your children with a youth MasterCard!"
alliao
honestly given how long ago that was I'd not be surprised if everything's completely peppered with chips... one from the manufacturer, one from inventory, one from logistic, one from corporate espionage agent, one from foreign adversary state actor sky really is the limit with these. didn't parmesan put some chips in their cheese too?
janice1999
Sounds crazy but car and truck tires have had RFID chips for years. I assume most people would be surprised by that.
https://www.tirereview.com/michelin-connect-car-tires-rfid-2...
dylan604
Stealing people's tires is a common thing. So add an RFID reader to cars with ALPR gear, and they can see if any tires they come across have also been reported stolen. See, it's nothing but wins for the consumer!
transcriptase
Imagine if the crazies were right and the Covid vaccines actually did have RFID.
Grazester
Then we would now have to wear tinfoil suits instead of just hats.
dylan604
Wouldn't that confuse someone if they were to be scanned and had multiple IDs because they received more than one vaccine as time went by?
notachatbot123
Is it possible to buy and use such tiny chips?
IndrekR
Used to develop readers based on similar UHF chips (868 MHz in EU). They were quite expensive compared to printed bar codes those were replacing. Also large. With (folded) antennas we are still talking about 40*10 mm minimum for the label. You can not use them on metal surfaces. Readers nearby will interfere as it works by EM wave backscattering, unlike NFC which is essentially a transformer (with electric field intentionally supressed usually). I think it still is a solution looking for problem. QR codes are cheap and NFC (14 MHz) readers are everywhere.
dfox
I did work with that recently. Did a few cool demos.
The tags got cheaper and you can even get tags that are intentionally designed for metal surfaces. Unlike NFC (or barcodes, obviously), you can read hundreds of tags essentially simultaneously. But because the reading is far from being perfectly reliable (one thing we found out is that human body blocks the 868MHz RFID completely, even at something like 50dBm EIRP, which is well above what is considered safe for human presence) the applications are indeed somewhat limited.
But apparently there are two classes of applications where this technology is really common: libraries and bulk checkout at sports equipment retailers (seems oddly specific). Both of these things also benefit from the "advanced" features of UHF RFID tags like dual-mode RFID/EAS tags and ability to permanently deactivate the tag by simple command.
krogenx
I have a hobby project where I am using UHF tags for counting poultry. The advantage that it gives me is long range (few meters) compared to LF / HF tags. QR code also wouldn't work due to size and distance.
Here's a video.
arccy
shopping at uniqlo is really nice where you can just dump everything you want into the scanner
https://www.huayuansh.com/uniqlo-global-stores-applied-rfid-...
The most amazing thing about this (and another tiny RFID chip that was on HN recently) is not that you can print them on wafers, but that you can cut up the wafers and handle these tiny dies. Imagine you manufactured sugar, but had to manipulate each sugar grain separately.