22-09-2012, 03:21 PM
Smart Card Production Environment
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Abstract
This chapter gives an introduction to the production steps in the lifecycle
of a (smart) card. After a short introduction the manufacturing of the card body will
be described. The next paragraphs give information on the personalization process
chain from data processing and on to card personalization and additional services
such as packaging and shipment. A separate paragraph focuses on quality and security
issues. At the end there are a few thoughts on current trends and challenges for
the smart card industry.
Introduction
There are two main ways to distinguish card types. On the one hand it is based on
the related application/Issuer type, on the other it is the technical features and/or
physical characteristics. As there is a close relation between the two - e.g. an ID
card for government bearing security features in the card body - this chapter will
focus on the “application view”:
In banking there are the standard debit and credit cards in ID-1 format (see Table.
2.1) - both with similar characteristics: A multi-layer (usually 4 to 5 layers of individual
plastic foils) card body with printed design, some optional printed security
features, a magnetic stripe, a signature panel, a hologram and (more and more) with
a chip. The optical personalization of the card is either done by embossing or by
laser engraving.
Smart Card Production Steps
Overview
On the way to the final product for the customer there are several steps in card production.
First there is the manufacturing of the card body - which includes making
of the plastic, printing, and adding additional elements, such as the magnetic stripe.
This is followed by embedding the smart card module, which itself went through
the steps of test and probably completion and initialization.
An optical and electrical personalization transforms the smart card to an individual
one. This often is accompanied by related services, such as card carrier personalization,
mail fulfilment and packaging. The following paragraphs describe these
steps in more detail.
Digital Printing
For high volume printing today there is no alternative to the techniques described
above. But as there is a trend to address card Issuers more and more individual,
small editions (even “lot size 1”) are topics for the card industry.
Digital printers working with thermal sublimation dye or retransfer printing are
used to print individual designs onto white cards. Though the quality of this technique
has so far not reached the level of Offset or Screen Printing, the results are
already very well accepted by card Issuers.
Lamination
Card bodies manufactured with the lamination technique consist of two or more
foils, which are pressed together under high temperatures. As the foils are of thermoplastic
material they will establish a connection under heat when their softening
temperature is reached.
The most common compositions are four- and five-layer cards, for contactless
and ID cards even up to nine layers are put together. No matter how many layers
are used, as the physical parameters of a card are defined in ISO, the sum of the foil
thicknesses has to be less than 840 microns.
To protect the design printing there are two ways: If there is external printing on
the outer layers of a card the surface will be covered by a transparent varnish. In the
most common case of internal printing, transparent overlay foils will be laminated
over the design which provides a better resistance against scratching and abrasion.
Besides design and overlay foils there are other components which can be applied
in the lamination process. Magnetic stripes and signature panels brought onto a foil
before are often added in this process step already. For contactless cards a “pre-lam”
inlay containing the chip module and antenna is one of the layers in the lamination
process.
Preparation of the Chip Module
In most cases chip modules are shipped on reels to the smart card manufacturer.
In a first step an incoming inspection will be made on a test handling machine to
ensure the quality of the modules before embedding. Usually the ATR of the chip is
checked and read/write tests on the EEPROM are performed.
As machine costs for test handlers are lower than for card personalization machines,
they are often used to already load data to the chip which are common for a
range of products.
For ROM masks this is the completion of the ROM OS in the EEPROM, e.g. for
extensions and patches. For Flash controllers the complete OS has to be loaded in
this step.
Depending on the contents of the initialization file loaded afterwards, file structures
and also partly their contents will be created, applications and keys will be
available on the chip.
The criteria which parts to load in which step will not only be dependant on cost
calculations but also on the product and related security requirements. So for some
products it is necessary to have a clear separation between the initialization and the
personalization. For other products it may be better to perform the initialization as
late as possible. This avoids logistic problems, as not too much variants have to be
kept in stock for the subsequent processes.