Wrinkiled microparticles for unclonable microtaggants

This paper presents wrinkled microparticles as unreplicable, unique, yet configurable microtaggants for anti-counterfeiting purposes. We mimicked the shape of the human fingerprint in microscale structures using three-dimensional wrinkle patterning. We utilized irreproducible distributions of ridges on wrinkled microparticles as unique codes, similar to human fingerprints, for identification. These wrinkled microparticles can provide reliable authentication by attaching to authentic products because they can be analyzed by general fingerprint-identification methods, exhibit high individuality, and allow mass production by combining lithography-free patterning with a particle-based substrate.