The selling of illicit goods has become a serious problem for both individuals and societies and therefore there is a strong need for more sophisticated anti-counterfeiting techniques. Current anti-counterfeiting tags can only contain limited information because they mainly use patterns and colors in specific designs. Herein, a molecular encoding technique using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is introduced as a more advanced anti-counterfeiting method. Unique SERS tags were formulated with a combination of plasmonic gold nanostars and various probe molecules. The molecular information in these tags can then be examined using SERS spectroscopy and differentiated using principal component analysis (PCA). The identification of the encoded molecular information is done by taking advantage of the strong Raman-enhancement from these gold nanostars. These SERS tags are extremely difficult to be duplicated and therefore, would be very hard to counterfeit. With further optimization, these molecular encoded gold nanostar tags could be applied in several fields such as trading, technologies, and communications.

Using surface-enhanced Raman scattering of gold nanostars for encoding molecular information

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.