Plasmonic nanopapers: flexible, stable and sensitive multiplex PUF tags for unclonable anti-counterfeiting applications

Abstract

Highly flexible and stable plasmonic nanopaper comprised of silver nanocubes and cellulose nanofibres was fabricated through a self-assembly-assisted vacuum filtration method. It shows significant enhancement of the fluorescence emission with an enhancement factor of 3.6 and Raman scattering with an enhancement factor of ∼10⁴, excellent mechanical properties with tensile strength of 62.9 MPa and Young's modulus of 690.9 ± 40 MPa, and a random distribution of Raman intensity across the whole nanopaper. The plasmonic nanopapers were encoded with multiplexed optical signals including surface plasmon resonance, fluorescence and SERS for anti-counterfeiting applications, thus increasing security levels. The surface plasmon resonance and fluorescence information is used as the first layer of security and can be easily verified by the naked eye, while the unclonable SERS mapping is used as the second layer of security and can be readily authenticated by Raman spectroscopy using a computer vision technique.