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Plasmonics Anti-Counterfeiting Technology

This could be interesting: NOtES exploits an obscure area of physics to accomplish its bright and sharp display, known as plasmonics. Light waves interact with the array of nano-scale holes on a NOtES display--which are typically 100-200 nanometers in diameter--in a way that creates what are called "surface plasmons." In the words of the company, this means light "[collects] on the films surface and creates higher than expected optical outputs by creating an electromagnetic field, called surface plasmonic resonance." [...] And security, surprisingly, is one of the major applications of these light-amplifying tiny holes. Compared with things like holograms, NOtES has a number of advantages. For one, the technology consists of nothing more than an array of tiny holes, which means it can literally be stamped into anything. Nanotech Security is in talks with the Bank of Canada, whose new plastic bills are a perfect candidate for security measures embedded using NOtES. [...] Using a physical stamp, Nanotech Security can imprint its minuscule holes into bills even after they've been printed, instantly transforming the area of the bill that's been stamped into something that resembles a tiny LED. It's just like the old-school printing process that yields embossed invitations and business cards, except that instead of pressing "save the date" into cardstock, a nickel stamp covered with nano-scale bumps presses corresponding holes into a material. The results aren't just visually crisp, they're also good for keeping things top secret. That's because the NOtES process yields a surface that reflects light from ultraviolet all the way into the far infrared, or wavelengths outside what we can see, but which can easily be read by machines. This opens up the potential for NOtES to be used to create watermarks on bills that counterfeiters can't even see. Anti-counterfeiting technologies have a difficult set of requirements. They need to be cheap for legitimate currency printers, and at the same time expensive for counterf...

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Source: Schneier on Security - Monday, 19 December


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