Biomolecular Taggants for Covert Tracking and Watermarking

Tracking of nuclear materials, military ordnance, and chemical and biological threat agents presents a significant challenge to the intelligence and military communities. The proliferation of non-tracked, illegally trafficked nuclear materials in particular has sparked considerable debate and is a cause for concern on the international stage. An effective system must be covert and ubiquitous; while encoding complex interaction information and supplying distinct identification of individual materials and material lots. In this Phase I SBIR proposal, Infoscitex proposes the use of a synthetic DNA-based taggant entrapped in a sol-gel material with attributes allowing for covert and secure labeling. This proposed material can be created using a combination of current technologies integrated into a novel detection and labeling system that is robust and covert.