Recent functional material based approaches to prevent and detect counterfeiting

Technological advances made in constructing high-resolution instrumentation have enabled fabrication of sophisticated counterfeit products. As a result, the need to develop novel anti-counterfeiting materials and systems is greatly increasing. Accordingly, various functional materials that display distinct chemical, physical as well as optical and electrical properties have been investigated for preventing and detecting counterfeiting. In this feature article, we describe recent strategies that have been devised for anti-counterfeiting purposes that focus on colorimetric and fluorometric approaches that are employed in the determination of the authenticity of banknotes, documents, medicine, etc. In addition, methods of incorporating organic electronics on banknotes as active authentication tools as well as molecular imaging techniques based on mass spectrometry are briefly described.