Sector(s): Food & Drink, Chemical, Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals, Life Sciences, Materials
About Opportunity:
The most prominent high security holographic anti-counterfeiting techniques include dot-matrix holograms and electron beam defined holograms. Dot-matrix holograms employ a grating array (with feature size in the range of 10um) to produce a holographic image. Electron beam defined holograms are a more secure, efficient, but expensive alternative. Their features have sub-wavelength scales (<0.1um) and they can engineer light more precisely to form superior holographic images.
Electron beam hologram features include: excellent security, extreme difficulty to copy, ease of verification, excellent holographic images, hidden images, and kinematic text.
We propose an anti-counterfeiting hologram based on electron beam lithography, which only gives a clear holographic image when conformed to a particular surface profile, and illuminated with a particular circular polarisation. Our design operates in reflection or transmission, and can be viewed on a screen, CCD, or directly by the human eye. The holograms are comprised of sub-wavelength features (~200 nm), where the de-phasing profile is encoded by altering the geometric properties of each feature. If the hologram is not given a pre-designed shape, it would produce a strongly distorted holographic image (e.g. of text, picture, QR/bar code).
IP Status:
The University filed UK Patent Application no 1719588.4 on 24 November 2017 covering this technology.
We are seeking a partner to fund and co-develop applications and uses of the technology, with a view to out-licensing the IP to users.