Direct laser printing of high-resolution physically unclonable function anti-counterfeit labels

Security labels combining facile structural color readout and physically unclonable one-way function (PUF) approach provide promising strategy for fighting against forgery of marketable products. Here, we justify direct femtosecond-laser printing, a simple and scalable technology, for fabrication of high-resolution (12 500 dots per inch) and durable PUF labels with a substantially large encoding capacity of 10895 and a simple spectroscopy-free optical signal readout. The proposed tags are comprised of laser-printed plasmonic nanostructures exhibiting unique light scattering behavior and unclonable 3D geometry. Uncontrollable stochastic variation of the nanostructure geometry in the process of their spot-by-spot printing results in random and broadband variation of the scattering color of each laser printed “pixel,” making laser-printed patterns unique and suitable for PUF labeling.