Does X-Ray radiation damage NFC tags?

[Bay Ltd.]

A few MIFARE DESFire EV1 that went through airport security X-Ray scanning, were not readable anymore.
Is there any experience on the resistance of NFC to X-rays? Is there technical documentation regarding this topic available?

---

+ 0  |  - 0

[TapLinx Support]

Hi Philipp,

NXP contactless products are certified against several standards. For X ray it is defined in:

ISO/IEC 7810, Third edition 2003-11-01
AMENDMENT 1 2009-12-15
AMENDMENT 1: Criteria for cards containing integrated circuits

9.1 X-rays
The card shall continue to operate as intended after exposure of any card surface to medium-energy X-radiation as described in the test methods in ISO/IEC 10373-1, with energy in the range of 70 keV to 140 keV, of a cumulative dose of 0,1 Gy per year.

NOTE This corresponds to approximately twice the maximum acceptable dose to which humans may be exposed annually.

I take always NXP contactless cards in my hand luggage with me at my business trips. It is checked in X ray scanners at the airport and I never found defect cards after scanning. The dose from modern X ray scanners are very low and does not damage electronic equipment.

Could it possible that the card was damaged in a different situation?

The TapLinx team

---

+ 0  |  - 0

[Author]

Posts