Payment fraud is a serious problem that affects many companies – from medicine to electronics, causing huge economic losses, causing security problems and putting health at risk to solve this problem an Engineering team uses diamond microparticles to create high-security anti-counterfeit tags.
Prostitutes and anti-business people are now locked in a technological arms race. While anti-counterfeiting tools are becoming increasingly high-tech – including holograms, thermochromic ink and radio frequency identification tags – counterfeit products are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from the real thing as counterfeiters use technology and – climb up.
Recently, a group of researchers of Dr. Zhiqin Chu from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), in collaboration with Professor Lei Shao from the School of Electronics and Information Technology from Sun Yat-sen University, and Professor Qi Wang from the Dongguan Institute of Optoelectronics of Peking University has developed a pioneering technology that counterfeiters have no answer to. The members of Dr. Chu has developed anti-counterfeit tags based on diamonds that are unique and known in the industry PUF – Physical Unclonable Function.
The team made these tags by implanting tiny artificial diamonds, known as diamond microparticles, on silicon wafers using a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The diamond microparticles, all of different shapes and sizes, form unique patterns after being dispersed in the silicon substrate.
Such a form is impossible to reproduce and therefore spreads light in a unique way. Simply put, it creates a unique “fingerprint” that can be scanned with a phone.
The second level of specialization, and therefore safety, comes from the fact that these diamond microparticles contain defects called silicon vacancy centers (SiV). SiVs give diamond microparticles a unique optical property: they emit near-infrared photoluminescence when illuminated with green light, making them easy to detect. Unique and digitized optical signatures can be combined into sophisticated and easy-to-secure codes that can be read by simple cell phone scanners and/or confocal fluorescence microscopes. Most importantly, these diamond-based tags are ideal for use in commercial products because they are extremely durable – in tests they have withstood heat, chemical activity and physical damage.
They are also cheap – it costs US$1 just to make 10,000 of these 200 µm × 200 µm markers. Also, because they are made of diamonds, these anti-freeze marks will increase the value of the product.
The brands are ready for commercial use, Dr Chu said, adding that the team’s next step is to “focus on practical applications”. “The fight against fake diamonds will be stepped up in various high-end markets such as jewelry, luxury goods, electronics and automobiles,” he said.
The results of a Dr. Chu in Nature Communications
Source: The University of Hong Kong
