Electronic – What material can I use to insulate NFC tags so they can be placed almost back to back

ferriteinsulationnfc

I have posters with "Tap me to check in/out of this meeting room" drawn on them. I have NFC Stickers behind each poster to send the user to a specific URL in the application.

They are being placed on a glass door so the customer wants them to be placed back to back so you can't see the back of any of the posters. Each poster does different things so I don't want the tags conflicts.

If I put foil/copper mesh between two posters it blocks/absorbs the NFC signals so I can't read the one behind, but that also blocks the one "in front" of the mesh that I want to be able to read.

I'm looking for a sandwich of materials that would work, something like:

  • Acrylic Poster
  • NFC tag (stuck to the back of the poster)
  • Rubber/Silicone(?)
  • Ferrite(?)
  • Glass of the door
  • Ferrite(?)
  • Rubber(?)
  • NFC tag
  • Acrylic Poster

Apologies if I explained that badly, I'm an applications developer out of my depth on materials/engineering!

Thanks

Best Answer

I think there are two possible solutions for back-to-back posters with NFC tags:

  1. You can buy special NFC tags that are for use on metal surfaces. (They have a built-in metal backing a short distance behind the NFC antenna, and everything is tuned to work with that gap. So they work on both metal and non-metal.) They do have a shorter range and are a bit more expensive, like $1 apiece. With those you could put foil between the two posters and have no worries.

  2. As commenters suggested, if your posters are wide enough you could do something like put the tag on the right side of each poster, so the tags are not back-to-back. This is error-prone if users wave their phones all around the poster though. (And, your solution of adding a gap between the posters also works.)