Search for: All records

Abstract Automatic recognition of unique characteristics of an object can provide a powerful solution to verify its authenticity and safety. It can mitigate the growth of one of the largest underground industries—that of counterfeit goods–flowing through the global supply chain. In this article, we propose the novel concept of material biometrics , in which the intrinsic chemical properties of structural materials are used to generate unique identifiers for authenticating individual products. For this purpose, the objects to be protected are modified via programmable additive manufacturing of built-in chemical “tags” that generate signatures depending on their chemical composition, quantity, and location. We report a material biometrics-enabled manufacturing flow in which plastic objects are protected using spatially-distributed tags that are optically invisible and difficult to clone. The resulting multi-bit signatures have high entropy and can be non-invasively detected for product authentication using $$^{35}$$ 35 Cl nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) spectroscopy. 

This paper describes a GaNFET-based high-speed charge injection circuit to study fast redox processes at electrode-electrolyte interfaces. The circuit allows the rates of electrode processes, which are much faster than those accessible with a conventional potentiostat, to be measured. It is able to inject charge across the interface within a few nanoseconds, and also to hold the potential generated across the cell following injection for up to 1 s without appreciable (less than 1%) decay. In addition, the circuit can still monitor the current flowing through the cell, as in a conventional potentiostat. Preliminary test results with both a dummy load and a custom two-electrode electrochemical cell confirm the functionality of the proposed circuit.