Infineon has created a battery-free NFC lock

Infineon is showing off a new chip designed to provide lock/unlock abilities to a lock without requiring a battery. The key to the tech is near-field communication, or NFC, which can transmit small bits of power along with the credentials that unlock the lock.

For a user, the experience is similar to using a phone to pay for something. Hold your phone next to the lock and it pops open. The market for this is lockboxes, safes, lockers at a gym or spa, or even office furniture. I’m excited about it because it takes tech and strips it down to a core function, making it better without adding anything to make it worse.

What do I mean by that? Smart locks have become fairly common. And there are a few smart padlocks out there that use Bluetooth to open the lock from a phone. But while a lock can be a pretty simple mechanism, when you add Bluetooth you’re adding a potential layer of complexity to it.

There are security elements to consider, plus an app and its attendant security. And the lock will need some kind of power source, which adds cost and the potential for battery changes and/or e-waste. In other words, both the manufacturer and the user are trading the convenience of not losing a key for a boatload of complexity.

Infineon’s chip — and that chip’s design — streamline things. The chip solves the problem of losing a key by replacing it with a phone, but doesn’t require an internet connection or perhaps even an app. I say perhaps because the manufacturer will likely want an app if only for a way to get the lock’s NFC key into a wallet app on the phone.

Because the transmission of NFC credentials can generate a few milliwatts of power (Qi Zhu, director of marketing and business development in Infineon’s power sensor systems business unit suggests 20 milliwatts is a good average), the lock doesn’t require a battery, which cuts down on potentially toxic materials and waste. This also enables new use cases — such as putting the locks in office furniture or rows of lockers at bus stations — where changing out hundreds of batteries is a non-starter.

It moreover adds the right level of convenience without requiring the internet. I know this may mean it doesn’t belong in an IoT newsletter, but I believe the tech industry can have a hard time delivering “smarts” without an internet connection, so when it does I like to call that out. Indeed, it’s been almost three years since I got excited about the potential for tech-enabled “dumb” devices, and I wish I saw more of them.

Infineon currently has several customers testing the silicon. Those customers range from firms that are building an entire lock around the new silicon to companies that make locks for other industries. So it will be a while before you can get a battery-free, NFC-powered lock or see them in lockers at the gym.