Issue 42, 2019

Self-assembly of coordination polymers on plasmonic surfaces for computer vision decodable, unclonable and colorful security labels

Abstract

Incorporating security labels with physical unclonable functions (PUFs) into products is considered as the most effective anti-counterfeiting measure. Here we reported a PUF-based security label composed of random colorful patterns. The security label was fabricated through self-assembly of coordination polymers – a cupric bromide complex of pyrazine 1,4-dioxide – on lithographically defined plasmonic surfaces. The coordination polymer exhibits excitation wavelength dependent fluorescence fingerprints, which enables encoding spectral information in the polymer. The fluorescence peaks of each spectrum can be easily converted to a unique anti-counterfeiting barcode. The developed security label also carries 2D graphical information, which can be visualized under bright-field, dark-field and fluorescence multifunctional microscopy. It is multicolored with high contrast under the bright/dark-field modes and single color under fluorescence mode. The multicolors originate from polymer-thickness dependent optical interference. The encryption with colors on a 50 μm square produces a minimum of 3739 PUF codes for the realized authentication system. Moreover, we developed a convenient and reliable authentication strategy based on the computer vision technique to verify the colorful PUF patterns with different definition, rotation angles, brightness, magnification and a mixture of these factors. A high correct validation rate of 100% is achieved using a match threshold of 0.3.

Graphical abstract: Self-assembly of coordination polymers on plasmonic surfaces for computer vision decodable, unclonable and colorful security labels

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
20 Aug 2019
Accepted
07 Oct 2019
First published
10 Oct 2019

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2019,7, 13040-13046

Self-assembly of coordination polymers on plasmonic surfaces for computer vision decodable, unclonable and colorful security labels

F. Han, Y. Liu, F. Li, Y. Lu, H. Cheng, Y. Lin, T. Zhao, S. H. Ng, U. Bach and Y. Zheng, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2019, 7, 13040 DOI: 10.1039/C9TC04615A

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