Grant: Idea to Innovation

The global value of counterfeit and pirated products is reported to exceed 1 trillion US dollars annually worldwide. As such, counterfeiting has a non-negligible impact on the world economy. Combined with the rise of terrorist and criminal activity, this stimulates an urgent need for new and enhanced security features to be incorporated in financial and identity documents and in high value products in order to stay one step ahead of counterfeiters. Of particular interest are the interference security image structures providing color-shifting effects. In an effort to increase the fabrication complexity of such systems by adding new properties while facilitating their identification, and to strengthen our intellectual property portfolio, we have recently filed a patent on Active Interference Security Devices. It is now the purpose of the present grant application to seek support for the refinement of the device designs leading to both enhanced effectiveness and performance and reduced fabrication costs, for the fabrication of convincing prototypes, and for in-depth exploration of the market opportunities in the area of the protection of precious documents.