Fraud puts the world’s economy and security at risk. According to a report released by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2020, the value of counterfeit and pirated products worldwide is estimated at US$ 1.7 trillion to US$ 4.5 trillion per year. Despite great efforts, anti-fraud methods such as QR codes can be easily created due to the great ability to hide data in strategic spaces. How to increase privacy density and space limit? The answer is New 3D printer for anti-falsification multi-level labels.
The team Led by Dr Ji Tae Kim from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has developed an advanced 3D printing process that can produce a new anti-counterfeiting 3D label set by polarization. This new (New 3D printer for anti-falsification multi-level labels) 3D tag can hide more digital information than traditional 2D tags. The work was published in Nano Letters in an article titled “Printing Dipeptides and Spatioselective Programming of Crystallinity for Multilevel Anticounterfeiting”.
Diphenylalanine (FF), a type of dipeptides, was chosen as a material for encryption because of its unique optical properties. Dr. Jihyuk Yang from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, HKU, explained, “FF has attracted the attention of neuroscientists for a long time because of its connection with Alzheimer’s disease. Recently, FF is emerging as a new electronic and photonic material due to its unique properties – e.g. piezoelectricity and optical birefringence – from the nature of crystals. Dr. Yang was the first author of the article.
“Our new 3D printing method combined with nature-based molecular assembly can print multi-dimensional 3D FF micro-pixels with crystals designed for high-quality data encryption. The 3D micro-pixels can encode digital numbers with “0” and “1”. The information capacity can be increased to 211 and one-eleventh independent pixels in a small area of 4 µm2 which is 1000 times smaller than a strand of hair,” said Dr. Ji Tae Kim. He believes that it can be used 3D printing technology has worked well to design security signs anywhere and anytime, helping to strengthen the information security of individuals and businesses.
