Luminescent glasses for product protection
The Fraunhofer Application Center for Inorganic Phosphors and Tailorlux GmbH jointly develop luminescent glasses for product protection. The innovative and patented technology of the Fraunhofer Application Center for Inorganic Phosphors opens up a new class of materials for Tailorlux for marking products such as plastics, fibers or resins.
The marking specialist from Münster wants to offer its customers individual and machine-readable tracers at all times and is breaking new ground for optical fingerprinting with the Fraunhofer AWZ Soest.
The luminescent glasses are characterized by high mechanical and chemical stability. For optical activation, metal ions from the rare earth group are added to the glass, which exhibit an element-specific emission spectrum.
At the same time, the glasses are very flexible in terms of the type and level of doping, so different metal ions can easily be added to the glass. The complexity of the resulting emission spectrum, hence the fingerprint of the glass, can be significantly increased by double or multiple doping. The fingerprint depends not only on the type and amount of doping, but also on the excitation wavelength.
Depending on the excitation wavelength, the luminescent material changes its color. “The multitude of possibilities in the combination of doping type and level opens up a new field of application for the use of the luminescent glasses: product marking. The resulting different spectra can thus ensure precise and individually desired tracking,” says Prof. Dr. Schweizer, head of the Fraunhofer Application Center for Inorganic Phosphors in Soest.
Contact Tailorlux
Tailorlux GmbH
Fraunhoferstr. 1
48161 Münster
Germany
www.tailorlux.com
Contact Fraunhofer
Fraunhofer-Anwendungszentrum für Anorganische Leuchtstoffe
Lübecker Ring 2
59494 Soest
Germany
www.awz-soest.fraunhofer.de
