A Near Field Communication chip is the integrated circuit within the NFC inlay that makes an NFC tag perform NFC operations. There are several different NFC chip types available; each with its own features, performance, cost and availability. NFC chips do not work by themselves; they must be be attached to an antenna to form an NFC inlay. The ultimate performance of an NFC chip is determined by both the NFC chip, the tuning of the antenna, the product the inlay is in and the device interacting with the NFC tag.

One of the first steps in an NFC project is to choose which NFC chip type will be used in the NFC tags. Here are some practical guidelines for choosing the correct NFC chip for your project:

• Make sure the NFC chip has enough memory capacity to store what you are going to encode
• Encode as little data as possible to increase read and write performance and usability
• Use a modern NFC chip that is readily available; they are better tuned for the antennas in NFC enabled devices
• Choose an NFC Forum compliant chip to ensure it will work on all NFC enabled devices
• Most NFC projects will want an NDEF formatted chip
• Some NFC chips have extra ‘features’; these are not used by the vast majority of deployments so don’t worry about them too much
• Not all NFC products (stickers, wristbands, cards…) are available with all NFC chips; another reason to use a modern and available NFC chip type