PHOTAG aims to develop a low-cost, multi-level security and easy-to-use anti-counterfeiting label for optical encoding of metadata.
Photonic QR codes for product identification will be patterned in photo-polymerizable liquid crystalline (LC) materials using different manufacturing techniques, which will enable labels with different sizes, scalability and information density capabilities.
The photonic label will include random defects that will serve as unclonable features that, through optical interrogation protocols based on a challenge-response pair scheme, will authenticate the product.
The PHOTAG project intends to realize two types of random QR codes by means of: i) colored photonic tags made of stabilized cholesteric liquid crystals; ii) holograms generated by 3D diffractive optical elements (DOEs) made of stabilized nematic liquid crystals.
Optical QR code encoding and authentication will be tested in a multi-step process for secure and certified reading and encoding of information at nodes in a production chain, at the end of which the end consumer will be able to link to product metadata
stored in a secure database through a simple optical reading of the QR code.
These optical metadata encoders, combined with PUFs, promise to fulfill all functions of identification, authentication, traceability, as well as anti-tampering for anti-counterfeiting of goods.
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