Brilliant Counterfeit Protection

Counterfeit products create losses in the billions each year. Beside the economic damages, all too often additional risks arise from the poor materials and shoddy workmanship of »knock-off artists«. Yet with the aid of fluorescing dyes, materials can be individually tagged and identified with certainty. A team of researchers from four Fraunhofer Institutes recently engineered a brand new process that is particularly forgery-proof: »We add various fluorescing dyes to the entire material,« explains Dr. Andreas Holländer of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP. »With the aid of the fluorescence, we can precisely ascertain specific characteristics, and thereby recognize if we are dealing with the original, and if the quality standards have been met.«