Ultra-thin chip technology has potential to provide solutions for overcoming bottlenecks in silicon technology and for leading to new applications. This, however, requires new techniques in fabricating very thin wafers or chips, in applying them to device integration processes and in assembly and packaging. Therefore, ultra-thin chips and the related applications represent a new paradigm in silicon technology. The paper highlights the prominent applications of ultra-thin chips, alerts to the related technological issues and compares the candidate enabling technologies. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.