'Atomic Fingerprinting' Tech Could End

Counterfeit Goods
The new anti-counterfeiting method has
two components: a unique molecular
pattern that can be incorporated into a
holographic label and a smartphone app.
Credit: Lancaster University

In the sophisticated world of

counterfeiting, it can often be difficult
to tell fakes from the real deal. But now,
scientists have developed a new method
that can stamp things with "atomic
fingerprints" to keep phony products at
bay.

"There is no bigger crime than counterfeit crime," said Robert Young, a professor of physics at
Lancaster University in the United Kingdom and chief technology officer of the tech startup
Quantum Base. [Faux Real: A Gallery of Forgeries]
Earlier this month, Young and his colleagues announced a relatively simple technique for
confirming the authenticity of an object an advance that could put a dent in the counterfeit
industry, where fakes, forgeries and imitations cost the global economy half a trillion dollars in
lost revenue each year, according to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development, headquartered in Paris.
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The new anti-counterfeiting method, published online in ArXiv, the open-access preprint journal
from Cornell University, has two components: a unique molecular pattern that can be
incorporated into a holographic label and a smartphone app.

The unique pattern is created by intentionally fabricating flaws into an atom-thin layer of
material, such as graphene oxide. Flaws may include removing a carbon atom, or adding extra
oxygen atoms, or creating a ridge of atoms, according to the researchers. Once the flaw is set, the
material is incorporated into an ink and then, using an inkjet printer, printed onto a hologram,
which can be added as a label to any product.

To confirm the presence of the atomic pattern, a person would use a smartphone camera and its
built-in flash to photograph the label. The flash excites the atoms, which produce a unique color
based on the pattern. A corresponding app can instantly analyze the image and confirm whether
the label is authentic or not, the researchers said.

"I'm really satisfied by how simple it is," Young told Live Science.
Solving such an extensive problem like counterfeiting requires a solution that can be adopted by
a large number of people, Young added. A technique that's easy to incorporate and easy to
analyze could ensure that it's widely adopted much faster, he said.

Young and his team are working with a company that prints 10 billion holograms per year and
said that the first application could be in the automotive industry, where parts are already spray-
painted with labels. By piggybacking onto existing manufacturing applications, the researchers
can prove that the method works, according to Young.

"We're expecting the first products in market in the first quarter of next year, in 2018," he said.

From there, the researchers would like to branch out to other industries, including
pharmaceuticals, where $200 billion a year is lost from counterfeit drugs, Young said. And
what's worse, this illegal medicine can sometimes lead to death.

"Thirty percent of counterfeit pharmaceuticals don't contain the correct active ingredient," Young
said. "People buy these things, believe they're real, but they're not being treated for the disease."

Young said that eventually, the atomic fingerprints his team has developed could be laminated
directly onto individual pills.

"This is genuinely a really exciting application," he said.

Original article on Live Science.

Tiny, Lens-Free Camera Could Hide in Clothes, Glasses (june 28)

A tiny, paper-thin camera that has no lens could turn conventional photography on its head, according
to new research.

The device, a square that measures just 0.04 inches by 0.05 inches (1 by 1.2 millimeters), has the
potential to switch its "aperture" among wide angle, fish eye and zoom instantaneously. And because
the device is so thin, just a few microns thick, it could be embedded anywhere. (For comparison, the
average width of a human hair is about 100 microns.)

"The entire backside of your phone could be a camera," said Ali Hajimiri, a professor of electrical
engineering and medical engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the principal
investigator of the research paper, describing the new camera. [Photo Future: 7 High-Tech Ways to
Share Images]

It could be embedded in a watch or in a pair of eyeglasses or in fabric, Hajimiri told Live Science. It could
even be designed to launch into space as a small package and then unfurl into very large, thin sheets
that image the universe at resolutions never before possible, he added.

"There's no fundamental limit on how much you could increase the resolution," Hajimiri said. "You could
do gigapixels if you wanted. (A gigapixel image has 1 billion pixels, or 1,000 times more than an image
from a 1-megapixel digital camera.)

Hajimiri and his colleagues presented their innovation, called an optical phased array, at the Optical
Society's (OSA) Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, which was held in March. The research was
also published online in the OSA Technical Digest.

The proof-of-concept device is a flat sheet with an array of 64 light receivers that can be thought of as
tiny antennas tuned to receive light waves, Hajimiri said. Each receiver in the array is individually
controlled by a computer program.
In fractions of a second, the light receivers can be manipulated to create an image of an object on the
far right side of the view or on the far left or anywhere in between. And this can be done without
pointing the device at the objects, which would be necessary with a camera.

"The beauty of this thing is that we create images without any mechanical movement," he said.

Hajimiri called this feature a "synthetic aperture." To test how well it worked, the researchers laid the
thin arrayover a silicon computer chip. In experiments, the synthetic aperture collected light waves, and
then other components on the chip converted the light waves to electrical signals that were sent to a
sensor.

The resulting image looks like a checkerboard with illuminated squares, but this basic low-resolution
image is just first step, Hajimiri said. The device's ability to manipulate incoming light waves is so precise
and fast that, theoretically, it could capture hundreds of different kinds of images in any kind of light,
including infrared, in a matter of seconds, he said.

"You can make an extremely powerful and large camera," Hajimiri said.

Achieving a high-power view with a conventional camera requires that the lens be very big, so that it can
collect enough light. This is why professional photographers on the sidelines of sporting events wield
huge camera lenses.

But bigger lenses require more glass, and that can introduce light and color flaws in the image. The
researchers' optical phased array doesn't have that problem, or any added bulk, Hajimiri said.

For the next stage of their research, Hajimiri and his colleagues are working to make the device larger,
with more light receivers in the array.

"Essentially, there's no limit on how much you could increase the resolution," he said. "It's just a
question of how large you can make the phased array."
Lens-Free Camera; Optical Phased Array (OPA)

Traditional cameraseven those on the thinnest of cell phonescannot be truly flat due to their optics:
lenses that require a certain shape and size in order to function. At Caltech, engineers have developed a
new camera design that replaces the lenses with an ultra-thin optical phased array (OPA). The OPA does
what lenses do using large pieces of glass: it manipulates incoming light to capture an image.

This device is a tiny, paper-thin camera that has no lens. Its shape is a square and it measures just 1 by
1.2 mm. It has the potential to switch its aperture (an opening that controls the light that passes
through a lens, like the lens of a camera) among wide angle, fish eye, and zoom instantly. And, because
this lens-free camera is so thin, it could be embedded anywhere. Ali Hajimiri, the researcher working on
this innovation, said that it could be embedded in a watch, in a pair of glasses or in fabric. He also said
that it could launch into space as a small package, and then unfold into large, thin sheets that could
image the universe at resolutions that were never possible before. HE also mentioned that there is no
limit on how much you could increase the resolution. The proof-of-concept device is a flat sheet with an
array of 64 light receivers that can be thought of as tiny antennas tuned to receive light waves, Hajimiri
said. Each receiver in the array is individually controlled by a computer program.

In fractions of a second, the light receivers can be manipulated to create an image of an object on the
far right side of the view or on the far left or anywhere in between. And this can be done without
pointing the device at the objects, which would be necessary with a camera. Hajimiri called this feature
a "synthetic aperture." To test how well it worked, the researchers laid the thin array over a silicon
computer chip. In experiments, the synthetic aperture collected light waves, and then other
components on the chip converted the light waves to electrical signals that were sent to a sensor. The
resulting image looks like a checkerboard with illuminated squares, but this basic low-resolution image is
just first step, Hajimiri said. The device's ability to manipulate incoming light waves is so precise and fast
that, theoretically, it could capture hundreds of different kinds of images in any kind of light, including
infrared, in a matter of seconds, he said. Achieving a high-power view with a conventional camera
requires that the lens be very big, so that it can collect enough light. This is why professional
photographers on the sidelines of sporting events wield huge camera lenses. But bigger lenses require
more glass, and that can introduce light and color flaws in the image. The researchers' optical phased
array doesn't have that problem, or any added bulk, Hajimiri said. For the next stage of their research,
Hajimiri and his colleagues are working to make the device larger, with more light receivers in the array.