Atmel announced the availability of an ultra-small XDFN (Extremely Thin Dual Flat No Leads) package including a 363-bit read/write transponder IDIC. The transponder IDIC ATA5577M1 is a low-frequency (LF, 100-150kHz) RFID (radio frequency identification) device designed for small tag applications including animal ID ear and bolus tags, standard key fobs or clamshell cards for access control solutions. Measuring at 2mm x 1.5mm x 0.37mm, the XDFN package is small.

The two coil wires can directly be soldered onto the two pads of the package and mounted or glued onto the antenna coil. The direct mounting and small packaging allows for extremely small end products since the resulting RFID tag size is determined by the size of the coil. The package can also be soldered on a standard printed circuit board (PCB), for example, in combination with a PCB-mounted antenna.

Since the chip has a 330pF on-chip capacitor trimmed to ± 3%, the antenna coil is the only external component required to form a trimmed LF-RFID tag.

Availability and Pricing

Samples are available now. Pricing for the ATA5577M1 starts at USD $0.38 in 20,000-piece quantities. To accelerate the development time, Atmel provides the ATA2270-EK1 evaluation kit, which is based on the Atmel LF-RFID reader chip U2270B and the AVR® microcontroller ATmega128. The kit includes all C-routines and PCB layout data in Gerber format.

In addition, several tag samples are supplied with the kit for easy system implementation. A PC-based graphical user interface is also provided. The ATA2270-EK1 evaluation kit is available at USD $399.