Leveraging micro and nanotechnology scientists from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering in Singapore have developed tags containing a unique magnetic "fingerprint" that could combat the increase in counterfeit goods by allowing genuine merchandise to be individually identified. Such tags, which are purportedly practically irreproducible but are inexpensive to manufacture, can be used in a wide range of items, including pharmaceutical and medical product packaging, luxury goods such as watches and handbags and automotive and aviation spare parts.

The inventors of the magnetic tagging technology, Adrian Burden and Peter Moran, founded Singular ID Pte. Ltd. to market and commercialise the technology. Singular ID’s tags are ceramic thin films (although they can be made from various other materials) that contain microscopic bar magnets, which are 200 nm in diameter (500 times thinner than a human hair) and are oriented perpendicular to the film’s surface. Multiple tags can be formed simultaneously in a batch process using commercially available inexpensive chemicals and processes. However, each tag has a unique randomised structure that is very difficult to produce. The unique structure affords each tag its own individually-recognisable magnetic signal, which can be read using standard magnetic read heads.

Singular ID Pte. has signed an exclusive license agreement with Exploit Technologies Pte. Ltd., the commercialisation arm of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. Singular ID Pte. has also signed an agreement with BioVenture Centre Pte Ltd., a joint venture of Becton, Dickinson and Company and Johns Hopkins Singapore to incubate and co-invest seed capital in Singular ID.

"The idea for our product came from the discovery that some magnetic composites can be made that contain an inherent disorder that is difficult to reproduce and control" stated Moran, chief technology officer of Singular ID. "This results in a unique but detectable pattern that we term a ‘fingerprint’. Moreover, as these features become extremely small the ‘fingerprint’ becomes prohibitively difficult if not impossible to duplicate. This leads to an exemplary way of tagging items to prevent counterfeit versions being manufactured."

Singular ID Pte.’s magnetic tagging technology is at an early stage of commercialisation. Potential areas for business collaboration include dispensing and attachment systems for securing the labels to diverse components; and developing portable reading systems, data bases and secure communications for remote access of information.

Moran told Sensor Technology that the reading device for the magnetic tag could be in a format similar to a magnetic swipe card reader or in a handheld wand format. The ideal read head is similar to that used for storing computer data or the read heads used in high-end VCRs.

Moran explained that at present there are two magnetic tag formats: one with nanoscale features; and another with microscale features. In the nanoscale version the researchers currently use a wet chemical process involving an acid reaction. No special chemicals are required in the microscale version.

Due to the manufacturing process the tag’s material contains significant disorder as it is being made, resulting in each tag being unique, Moran noted. Therefore, once a tag is made one simply reads the signal inherent to the tag and stores it in a database for subsequent authorisation of the tag. Moran noted the concept is quite similar to human fingerprint identification in which each individual’s fingerprint forms differently through a natural process and is stored in a database that allows recognition of a person.

Because the size scale of the features in the magnetic tag’s ‘fingerprint’ are very small and are also three-dimensional, it is very difficult if not impossible to reproduce the structure of each magnetic tag, depending on the size scale used. The inventors of the magnetic tag technology have not been able to reproduce any tags that they have made.

Singular ID has initially focused the magnetic tagging technology on luxury goods and pharmaceutical and medical products. However, they are clearly interested in many other areas (such as, for example, tagging of automotive components or other metal components or tagging foods).

To comment on this article, write to us at tiresearch@frost.com

To find out more about Technical Insights and our Alerts, subscriptions and research services, access http://ti.frost.com