FRAUD-PROOF GUARANTEED

KIT and ZEISS declare war on product piracy. Printed, fluorescent 3D microstructures offer increased protection against counterfeiting.

Leather goods, works of art, jewelry - there is hardly an area in which product counterfeiting has not become commonplace. In 2017 alone, German customs removed 3,295,600 counterfeit items worth 196 million euros from circulation. According to estimates by the consulting firm Ernst & Young, the German economy suffers annual damage of 56 billion euros as a result. However, not only manufacturers are almost powerless in the face of declining market shares and image losses; customers also have to contend with the negative consequences of product piracy. There is a clear need for action, especially when the products affected are those for which safety and reliability are in question, for example in the case of automotive spare parts.

One solution could be to continue developing security features that clearly distinguish originals from counterfeits. "Today, most optical security features are based on two-dimensional structures, such as holograms. However, is has already been possible to imitate these processes in the past and transfer them to counterfeits as stamps. Science and product counterfeiters are in a permanent race to develop new security features and imitate them," says Professor Martin Wegener, group leader at the Institute of Applied Physics and director of the Institute of Nanotechnology at KIT.

After Carl Zeiss AG inquired if it would be possible to produce such a security feature, he joined forces with scientist Frederik Mayer and ZEISS employees to develop an innovative process based on three-dimensional microstructures. These consist of a stable three-dimensional support framework in which quantum dots of fluorescent materials can be variably arranged. Layer by layer, a structure consisting of one non-fluorescent and two or more fluorescent photoresists is thus applied. This process is significantly safer than existing methods. "On the one hand, the addition of any number of different fluorescent materials enables a high number of variants, and on the other hand, it is very complex to manufacture due its multiple layers. This construct makes life difficult for counterfeiters," explains Frederik Mayer.

A high-resolution laser lithography device from Nanoscribe GmbH, a spin-off of KIT in which ZEISS also holds a stake, is used for printing. The laser beam of the printer passes through the liquid photoresist. The material is only exposed at the focal point of the laser beam and hardens. What is special here is the small size of the optical security features with a side length of 100 micrometers, which corresponds roughly to the thickness of an 80g/m² paper page. The advantage of this is that they are not visible to the human eye and can therefore be permanently applied to high-value products such as jewelry. The number of possible applications is endless. "One could conceivably integrate the filigree structure into security labels, which are used, for example, to distinguish pharmaceuticals or original spare parts from counterfeits. But it would also be possible to use the process in the field of document protection, for example as a security mark on ID cards and passports," says Professor Wegener. "However, a special reader that makes the fluorescent 3D structures visible is needed to read them out. Currently, we use a special confocal laser-scanning microscope for this purpose. To make the step into industrial use, the goal would be to develop a handy and significantly cheaper readout device for end users."

Stefan Richter, an employee in the Corporate Research & Technology department at ZEISS, emphasizes, "Our interest is currently focused primarily on research. Here, we see ourselves as a sparring partner and consultant, offering support in the area of measurement technology or the provision of optical components, for example. In the long term, of course, we also want to examine what a possible business model might look like, who potential customers are, and whether corresponding write and read-out devices meet with demand."

NANOSCRIBE GMBH

The scientific spin-off of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was founded in 2008 and has since established itself as a market and technology leader in the field of 3D printing on the nanometer and micrometer scale. The company supplies equipment, software and materials related to laser lithography as well as associated processes as a complete solution from a single source.

 

„THE RANGE OF POSSIBLE APPLICATION SCENARIOS CAN BE VERY LARGE”

Stefan Richter, Corporate Research & Technology, Systems & Engineering employee at Carl Zeiss AG, on the cooperation between ZEISS and KIT.

How did the cooperation between ZEISS and KIT in the area of optical security systems come about?

Richter: "ZEISS has been in regular contact with Professor Martin Wegener from the Institute of Applied Physics for many years with regard to research in photonics and microtechnology. We also hold a stake in Nanoscribe, which provides the hardware required for this research, namely 3D printers for the nano and micrometer scale. In the search for new product ideas, we as Corporate Research and Technology department are very interested in seeking exchanges with experts, including from the academic field, at an early stage. We approached Professor Wegener with the initial idea of a three-dimensional security feature, and he worked with scientist Frederik Mayer to develop the concept fundamentally. Within a short time, a very convincing demonstration of the security features had already been implemented.

What is your current role as a cooperation partner?

Richter: "Since we always look for a reference to link new ideas to future applications and products, we are interested in competences from the academic environment with regard to new technologies. In the case of 3D printing of microstructures, Professor Wegener's working group is the first point of contact for us because of its many years of expertise. We try to support the work at KIT as a discussion partner through our expertise in the field of microscopy and metrology as well as the provision of components from our product portfolio, such as microscope lenses. Beyond that, one of our tasks is to work out options for a joint commercial exploitation of the results. The strategic cooperation between KIT and ZEISS provides an ideal basis for this collaboration.

Where is the journey still headed?

Richter: "Currently, it is difficult to predict how the results of Frederik Mayer's doctorate can be commercially exploited. In principle, of course, the range of possible application scenarios for this technology can be very large. It ranges from authenticity seals for high-value products to the protection of documents such as passports or ID cards. On the other hand, the market introduction of such products is not a foregone conclusion. We need to create the right conditions, by providing handy and cost-effective reading devices and writing systems for high throughputs. It is also important to find pilot customers who are convinced by the technology. Our task now is to examine how a possible business model might look like, who potential customers would be and whether corresponding products would meet with demand."

PROF. DR. MARTIN WEGENER

Professor Martin Wegener has been with KIT since 1995. Besides his teaching and research activities at the Institute of Applied Physics, he currently holds several management positions and offices. Since 2001, he heads the "Photonics" department at the Institute of Nanotechnology, of which he also serves as the scientific director since 2016, and was Dean of the KIT Physics Faculty from 2015-2017. After receiving his doctorate from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in 1978, Martin Wegener fist spent two years as a PostDoc at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the USA.

Professor Wegener's research interests include ultrafast optics, (extreme) nonlinear optics, near-field optics, optical laser lithography, and optical, mechanical, electronic, and thermodynamic metamaterials. He authored numerous publications and co-editor of several scientific journals in these fields. According to the evaluation of the media group Thompson Reuters, Professor Wegener was even one of the most cited scientists (top 1%) for four consecutive years (2014-2017).

The physicist was also awarded many prestigious prizes for his research and his teaching activities, including the Landeslehrpreis Baden-Württemberg (1998), the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the DFG (2000) and the European Union René Descartes Prize in 2005. As recently as 2017 he received the Technology Transfer Prize of the German Physical Society together with Nanoscribe GmbH. Professor Wegener is one of the four founders of this spin-off of KIT, which became an international market leader for ultra-precise 3D laser lithography after only a few years.

FREDERIK MAYER

Frederik Mayer was born in Stuttgart in 1991 and began studying physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2010, graduating in 2016. In his master's thesis, he focused on light propagation in scattering media and developed a custom-made cloaking device to camouflage contact wires on large-area organic light-emitting diodes.

Since 2016, he is a doctoral student at the Institute of Nanotechnology and the Institute of Applied Physics, where he is working on the development of novel security features manufactures with the help of 3D microprinting techniques.

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