Anti-Counterfeiting & Aesthetic

Smart Material Solutions (SMS) enhances brand security with striking decorative and advanced anti-counterfeiting features by encoding custom images, logos, and designs directly into materials at the nanoscale. Rather than relying on pigments or inks, these images use structural color—the same phenomenon behind the Morpho butterfly’s vivid color—to produce vibrant designs that are both visually distinctive and exceptionally difficult to counterfeit.

This technology unlocks new possibilities for luxury brands, apparel, watches, packaging, and other premium products by combining overt visual effects, such as brilliant iridescent patterns, with covert security elements, including microscopic logos and laser authentication. For example, the video on the right shows an SMS logo made of millions of microscopic SMS logos, creating multi-level security that is both visually stunning and nearly impossible to counterfeit.

Overt Features

Overt features like those shown below arise from precisely controlled diffractive and plasmonic interactions, producing angle-dependent color shifts, iridescence, and high-contrast visual patterns. SMS’s rapid prototyping capabilities enable small-batch, fully customized designs for one-of-one or limited-edition releases.

The patterning process supports a wide range of visual effects, including grayscale imagery, multicolor patterns, and features whose visibility changes depending on lighting conditions.

Covert Features

Covert features include microscopic logos, authentication marks, and encoded diffractive elements that can only be detected under magnification or specific laser illumination conditions, providing an additional layer of secure brand verification. These microscopic logos can be engineered at multiple scales—ranging from features so small they require high-power microscopy to detect, to slightly larger designs that are visible with a loupe.

Industrial-Scale Nanomanufacturing

SMS’s proprietary manufacturing processes enable the scalable, cost-effective mass production of these advanced brand authentication features. For example, the video on the right demonstrates roll-to-roll nanoimprint lithography (R2R NIL) at SMS, a high-throughput technique used to create large-area films embedded with custom images and security elements.

Contact us if you’re interested in partnering or learning more!