NFC-enabled PCB Business Cards

Since I love designing printed circuit boards, I thought it would be a neat idea to make a business card reflecting this passion and differentiate myself from my peers at professional networking events.

Like all my other projects, I started in Altium Designer and sketched out a rounded rectangular board shape the same size as a standard credit card.

I also wanted to incorporate my college colors into the design and realized that it would look great with JLCPCB's black substrate offering. Since gold is another one of our colors, I went with their ENIG service, which plated the exposed copper in gold.

I went through a few revisions of the design...

and finally settled on this:

I have a QR code in the corner that links directly to my website, and I also added a reprogrammable NFC chip to the right side. The NFC antenna is tuned specifically for this design, and to pay homage to my passion for designing circuits, I left the traces exposed.

Since I was already at college, I opted to use their assembly service to take care of soldering on the NFC chip. About a week later, they were at my doorstep, and here they are!