Anti-counterfeit polymers work like fingerprints
Monday, February 16, 2015 - 09:30
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org)—When it comes to tagging items to prove their authenticity, the goal is to stay ahead of counterfeit technology. The best tags are unique, complex, easy to read, and difficult to reproduce. One naturally-occurring authentication "tag" is fingerprints, which are difficult to replicate, but are easy to read. Wook Park and Sunghoon Kwon from Seoul National University developed a process for making anti-counterfeit tags from wrinkled silica polymers that is based on the way fingerprints are used for identification. Their work is published in Advanced Materials.