RFID Tag Failure after Thermal Overstress

In this work the failure modes and mechanisms are investigated of a commercially available RFID tag, when it is exposed to extreme temperatures well beyond specifications. Both erroneous functioning and malfunctioning are observed after a thermal cycle exposing the tag to an elevated temperature in the 300-550 °C range. Void formation is the dominant failure, leading to a complete malfunction of the tag. Sporadically, the RFID tag returns a wrong identification code after extreme thermal cycling. This effect is caused by relatively weak bits flipping from “1” to “0” and seems consistent with existing retention models.