Security Focus for 2022 Holography Winners

December’s Excellence in Holography awards, organised by industry trade body International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA), were presented at the annual Holography Conference Online earlier this month, and five out of the six winners were security-related.

Germany’s foil and security feature producer KURZ won the ‘Innovation in Holographic Technology’ for its KINEGRAM® DYNAMIC technology that showcases innovative surface-applied security features for banknotes.

The technology, launched earlier this year and demonstrated through its Aerospace house note series, is based on micro-lenses which, in combination with diffractive features, provide security effects with movement, colour change and depth that can be checked by the public to confirm a banknote’s authenticity.

Balloon Denomination 50 (© KURZ).

Germany’s Louisenthal and France’s IDEMIA were joint winners of the ‘Best Applied Security Product’ category.

The Reserve Bank of Malawi’s new 5,000 kwacha features a LEAD foil stripe from Louisenthal, which appears on the left of the notes and displays a combination of vibrant effects and tones created from holographic and micro-mirror technologies, showing achromatic and rainbow effects when the note is tilted.

Malawi 5000 Kwacha (© Louisenthal).

IDEMIA’s LASINK Helios technology is linked to a DOVID (Diffractive Optical Variable Image Device) and, combined with holographic technology, displays striking optical effects, such as colour variations of the portrait including a full polychromatic view with true colours, which vary depending on the angle of view.

Easy to inspect, resistant to multiple types of fraud and durable, the use validates both secondary and main portrait images on ID documents, thus confirming the identity of the document holder.

LASINK Helios (© IDEMIA).

The winner of the ‘Best Origination’ went to IQ Structures for IQS Singularity, a commemorative hologram presented in the form of a banknote stripe paying tribute to the first ever images, unveiled earlier this year, of Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.

The awards were judged by the IHMA Board, but conference attendees also got to have a say, voting online for their favourites. The winner of the ‘People’s Choice’ was Computer Holography Centre for a new holographic principle with great potential for high security application, called 3D Zero Order Imaging.

The 3D images created through this technique can be observed when illuminated by white light, the observer seeing the 3D image with full parallax, both when the optical element is tilted and when it is rotated through 360 degrees.

In addition, unlike rainbow holograms, the colour of the formed 3D image does not depend on the viewing angle – in other words, the 3D image behaves like a real 3D object.

3D zero order imaging (© Computer Holography Centre).

Chair of the IHMA, Dr Paul Dunn, commended the standard of entries as being of the highest quality, representing an innovative industry at the forefront of the fight against counterfeiting.