Identification of components

摘要

Values of a property of a component produced by a statistical process, e.g. the sawn edges (2) of semiconductor components (1), can be used to characterise that component uniquely. A characteristic value of the property, or one or two unique codes corresponding to that property, are recorded, e.g. by a CCD camera, and stored in digital format. For semiconductor chips the colour spectrum may also be used as unique property, or the shape of a metal track at a suitable magnification, stored in a database as characteristic values or codes together with the chip position on the wafer during manufacture.