Tunable solid-state fluorescent materials for supramolecular encryption

Xisen Hou, Chenfeng Ke, Carson J. Bruns, Paul R. McGonigal, Roger B. Pettman and J. Fraser Stoddart ()
Additional contact information
Xisen Hou: Northwestern University
Chenfeng Ke: Northwestern University
Carson J. Bruns: Northwestern University
Paul R. McGonigal: Northwestern University
Roger B. Pettman: Cycladex, c/o Innovation and New Ventures Office, Northwestern University, 1800 Sherman Avenue, Suite 504
J. Fraser Stoddart: Northwestern University

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7884 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7884

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7884

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().