SICPA and UbiQD Partner for Quantum Dot Security

SICPA and nanotechnology company UbiQD have announced an expansion of their partnership to develop security inks based on the latter’s quantum dot technology.

Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor nanoparticles that exhibit high efficiency photoluminescence over a wide range of tunable colours, making them effective at imparting unique optical properties. As a result, security features based on QDs are inherently very difficult to reproduce and can be used to combat counterfeiting and strengthen security applications, said SICPA.

‘This partnership with UbiQD has enabled us to develop cutting-edge optical and machine-readable features that we will be able to add to our robust portfolio of security inks and solutions for our clients,’ explained Scott Haubrich, R&D Director, SICPA US.

The two companies have been co- developing QD-based security features for the past six years. Having reached a number of technical milestones in a multi- phased joint-development effort, they are now expanding their partnership to commercialise several security applications based on the novel characteristics of UbiQD’s technology through an exclusive supply and licencing agreement.

UbiQD (the name stands for ubiquitous quantum dots and is pronounced ‘ubiqity’) was founded in 2014 by Hunter McDaniel, and raised $7 million in 2020 for the technology. It employs 25 people at its Los Alamos, New Mexico facility and focuses on using quantum dots in greenhouse roofs and windows.

The development of the technology for use in security inks is a smaller, but growing, part of the business, according to McDaniel, and will be a key driver of revenue growth, contributing up to a quarter ($1 million) of projected sales of $3.5 million in 2022.

He commented that commercialising quantum dots is usually limited, because they can be expensive and toxic to make. But the company has developed a way of manufacturing them more safely and at a lower cost.

‘The colours of light that these nanocrystals absorb and emit is determined by their size, which we control in the manufacturing process,’ McDaniel noted.

‘With dyes and phosphors, a given compound has a fixed absorption and emission spectrum, so to create a new colour, you’d need a completely new compound. There are a finite number of colours that you can access because there are only so many compounds available,’ pointed out Scott Haubrich. ‘Whereas with quantum dots, you can use the same composition of matter to create almost any arbitrary colour. It’s a paradigm shift for security inks.’ 

There are, however, always challenges with using new technologies, and quantum dot-based inks are no exception. McDaniel pointed to reliability and consistency as areas that the partners have been able to overcome.

‘Some security features need to perform under harsh conditions for years,’ he said. ‘The tunability of quantum dots is a key feature, but can also be a challenge because minute differences in size between batches can lead to colour differences. At the nanometre size regime, even a difference of a single layer of atoms in each nanocrystal can throw off the ensemble optical properties.’ 

While SICPA and UbiQD’s partnership was, at first, ‘narrowly defined’, UbiQD will now supply large amounts of quantum dots for SICPA for a wider range of purposes, broadening the scope of the partnership into areas such as supply chain integrity, sensitive document security or counterfeit pharmaceutical deterrence.