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4 Identification
4.1 Introduction
The section gives a brief overview of the various nanotechnology developments that are
focused on identification of goods, products, and devices and verification of personal
identity. The first part provides an overview of the various authentication and anticounterfeiting
solutions being pursued for brand protection such as nanobarcodes and
nanoparticles. This is followed by an overview of the tools and techniques used in
forensics for detecting fingerprints and forgeries and confirming the identity of objects.
The third part provides an overview of the potential of quantum cryptography in secure
information transfer. While some of these technologies are under field trial, others are
not likely to be implemented for many years. In the final part, the market size of
counterfeit and grey products has been presented to emphasize the seriousness of the
problem.
4.2 Anti counterfeiting and authentication
Laser surface authentication (LSA) TM is a technique that uses a laser to examine and
store a “map” of the microscopic roughness on the surface of objects, through the
diffused scattering of a focused laser (a phenomenon called laser speckles; Cowburn &
Buchanan, 2005). The identity “code” obtained from this process is similar to biometric
codes obtained from iris scans and fingerprinting. This code is stored in a database that
can be accessed at a later stage to determine the authenticity of a given product. The
probability of any two codes from different objects matching has been shown to be 10 -72
for paper and 10 -20 for matt finished plastic cards and coated cardboard paper.
Figure 4.1 a). Microscopy image of paper surface: the pattern on surface of paper will survive
soaking, b). Optical Geometry of LSA TM
The advantage of the LSA TM technique is that natural surface roughness cannot be
replicated through any process, unlike holograms and watermarks. Among other
advantages is 100% accuracy, robustness against wear and tear, low cost of hardware,
high uniqueness of feature, covert ability, speed of scanning on production line and low
additional cost for products due to absence of chips. The main disadvantages are that it
cannot be used on transparent and reflecting surfaces, the acceptable limit of alignment
being 1mm; and high memory requirement of between 125 -750 bytes for each code
(adding up to considerable memory requirements for whole product batch runs;
Cowburn, 2007). The solution is being developed by Ingenia technology for paper,
plastics, metals and ceramics at product, packaging and transportation stages of the
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