Quantum dots to combat piracy
Quantum Materials Corporation, based in Texas USA, has acquired a technology to embed quantum dots into 3D-printed objects as a kind of security signature. QMC hopes that this 3D-printing/additive manufacturing approach, developed at Virginia Tech in the US, will be a way of protecting 3D printed objects from being copied.
QMC is known for making tetrapod-shaped quantum dots (QD) for medical, display, solar energy and lighting applications. Compared to their spherical cousins, tetrapod QDs offer advantages such as higher brightness, more colours, the use of less active material, better stability and longer lifetime.
By using tetrapod quantum dots with specific structural characteristics, or dual emission tetrapods that can emit two different colours, the company says it can further increase the security measures inherent in the Virginia Tech process.
"The remarkable number of variations of semiconductor nanomaterials properties QMC can manufacture, coupled with Virginia Tech's anticounterfeiting process design, combine to offer corporations extreme flexibility in designing physical cryptography systems to thwart counterfeiters," said David Doderer, QMC's VP for research and development.
