The technological concept 'dicing-by-thinning' (DbyT) offers a new technique for die separation for ultra-thin wafers. Conventional sawing is replaced by preparation of frontside trenches and subsequent backside thinning. It will be shown that introducing plasma etched trenches allows for both preparation of ultra-thin dies of high fracture strength and for a significant increase in number of chips per wafer. It is concluded that dicing-by-thinning offers a new strategy for cost effective manufacture of very small and ultra-thin radio frequency identification (RFID) devices. Finally, a short outlook on the development of self-assembly processes for ultra-thin microelectronic components will be given.