Tunable solid-state fluorescent materials for supramolecular encryption

By Xisen Hou, Chen Ke, C. Bruns, P. R. McGonigal, R. B. Pettman, J. Stoddart. Nature Communications, 2015

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Tunable solid-state fluorescent materials are ideal for applications in security printing technologies. A document possesses a high level of security if its encrypted information can be authenticated without being decoded, while also being resistant to counterfeiting. Herein, we describe a heterorotaxane with tunable solid-state fluorescent emissions enabled through reversible manipulation of its aggregation by supramolecular encapsulation. The dynamic nature of this fluorescent material is based on a complex set of equilibria, whose fluorescence output depends non-linearly on the chemical inputs and the composition of the paper. By applying this system in fluorescent security inks, the information encoded in polychromic images can be protected in such a way that it is close to impossible to reverse engineer, as well as being easy to verify. This system constitutes a unique application of responsive complex equilibria in the form of a cryptographic algorithm that protects valuable information printed using tunable solid-state fluorescent materials. Solid-state fluorescent materials show promise for potential applications in security and anti-counterfeiting technologies. Here, the authors report a heterorotaxane which has found application in security inks with highly tunable solid-state fluorescence through supramolecular encapsulation.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ee73dc073c0c2bb66d727c9bbab060004d3bfff2