Materials mechanics issues of smart card manufacturing

Smart cards offer some advantages, e.g., for replacement of cash, storage of personal data of any kind, electronic identification, access control, data encryption, and electronic signature. Application areas are banking, telecommunication, high security, and social service. Permissible mechanical and thermal loads to smart cards call for respective high quality packaging technologies. Furthermore, the prediction of smart card performance during manufacturing and service requires the description of stress and temperature of the dependent processes involved. A complete solution of the described problems needs a direct coupling between simulation tools and advanced physical experiments. Finite Element simulations together with appropriate failure and fatigue models allow to predict the life time of these configurations and to improve the same by material or geometry variation. Because of the high degree of component and material complexity in such configurations, an experimental verification of simulation results for particular cases is strongly indicated. Capabilities of modern measurement and testing techniques, as for example micro deformation analysis, scanning acoustic microscopy and the measurement of residual stresses by X-ray diffraction, are demonstrated and discussed in the following paper.