Counterfeit battling particles
Counterfeit battling particlesJose-Luis Olivares/MIT

In the future, you will be able to test for counterfeit goods by whipping out your smartphone and identifying glowing nanocrystals.

That incredible proposal comes from a team of chemical engineers at MIT, who believe they have just scuppered a trade that costs the UK economy £1.3 billion a year in lost profits and tax.

The particles, 200 microns in length, are actually polymers engineered to feature stripes of nanocrystals (basically, very tiny crystals), which will glow in different colours when covered in near-infrared light. The team does not just want to embed these particles in high-priced luxury goods and electronics, but potentially in vaccine containers -- they can be engineered to demonstrate if they've been in temperatures that are too hot or cold. 

The MIT team describe the particles as having "decodable identities", introduced using different elements -- ytterbium, gadolinium, erbium and thulium. Each of these gives off visible colour when exposed to infrared light, and the team has engineered them to emit nine different colours so far. They used a technique called stop-flow lithography to achieve this -- it involves using polymer streams containing nanoparticles, that are then set solid in parallel lines using ultraviolet light. The idea is to not just use a single colour per particle, but to integrate a number of elements/stripes that could be replicated in a vast quantity of different patterns. It means, write the authors in Nature Materials, the method offers "virtually unlimited encoding capacity".

"Randomly embedding ten particles from a set of just 1,000 unique asymmetric particles yields an encoding capacity [that's] enough to uniquely barcode every manufactured product on Earth," they promise.

On top of this, its tough stuff. It is claimed to withstand the extreme conditions common to plastics manufacturing, including temperatures of up to 260 degrees Celsius. Integrate them into the very fabric of your goods, and it will be almost impossible to shift them.

"Particles are also insensitive to repetitive illumination and ambient light, a distinct advantage over fluorescently labelled particles that must be stored in the dark."

Nanocrystals detected using an iPhone
Nanocrystals detected using an iPhoneMIT

Best of all, you don't need a super powerful (read: expensive) microscope to identify them because of their colourful properties. The team trialled its identification method using an iPhone 4S camera, exhibiting photos in the paper of the brightly coloured striped particles on the device's screen.

The particles could be incorporated into almost anything, considering their durable properties -- even ink, making it hard if not impossible to fake a future masterpiece. 

"What separates our system from other anti-counterfeiting technologies is this ability to rapidly and inexpensively tailor material properties to meet the needs of very different and challenging requirements, without impacting smartphone readout or requiring a complete redesign of the system," commented co-author and MIT graduate student Paul Bisso in a statement. 


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