Binary Multi-Taggant System for Unique Target ID

To allow warfighters the ability to detect, classify, identify, geolocate and track entities buried in large amounts of urban clutter, an optical taggant technology, delivery system, and interrogation system, is proposed that not only is environmentally robust, but permits a very large number of unique, covert identifiers to aid target identification and tracking, even in crowded urban environments. The proposed tags are designed be read from significant standoff distances, and since the mechanisms of both excitation and emission are restricted to the solar-blind UV, NIR, and SWIR spectral bands, the taggant design is covert, yet readable with available military detector technologies. Building on the team's extensive experience with nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs), security ink chemistry, and military EO system design, in Phase I, a series of non-toxic NQDs functionalized with chromophores will be synthesized, and their well-defined spectral emission signatures on surfaces, including fabrics, will be demonstrated. The long-term stability of the taggants will also be investigated. These learnings will be applied to the Phase II program which will implement and characterize a functional, end-to-end system consisting of a set of taggants, a deposition system, and an interrogation unit.BENEFITS: Many billions of dollars a year are lost to counterfeit documents and consumer goods, in addition to the risks associated with counterfeit products such as foods, beverages, and medicines. The tags proposed herein are covert, and therefore give such items a covert but authenticable feature. Due to the encoding inherent in the particles, many billions of unique codes are possible, allowing brand owners to have unique identifiers for their products. For brand-protection and anti-counterfeiting, the proposed technology can be used as forensic taggants for packaging and labels.