Authentication of Injection Molded Epoxy-Based Electronics Packages Using Molecularly Imprinted Taggants

Reference#: P01990

The international market place has been flooded with a variety of counterfeit merchandise. The use of counterfeit can compromise the function of a critical piece of equipment and result in failure and possible loss of life. This places a responsibility on manufacturers to provide a means of authentication for their products for ethical reasons as well as to avoid false claims of liability. There usually is a trade-off between ease of operation and ease of subversion.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has invented and is patenting a method of authentication that is simple to use, has a tunable degree of information content, and is virtually impossible to subvert. The basis of this method is a new technology called, “molecular imprinting, “and the method is particularly well adapted to injection molded epoxy-based electronic packages.