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AssigneeNational Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC
InventorsDorina F. Sava Gallis, Kimberly Butler, Lauren E. S. Rohwer
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Optical tags provide a way to identify assets quickly and unambiguously, an application relevant to anti-counterfeiting and protection of valuable resources or information. The present invention is directed to a tag fluorophore that encodes multilayer complexity in a family of heterometallic rare-earth metal-organic frameworks (RE-MOFs) based on highly connected polynuclear clusters and carboxylic acid-based linkers. Both overt (visible) and covert (near infrared, NIR) properties with concomitant multi-emissive spectra and tunable luminescence lifetimes impart both intricacy and security. Tag authentication can be validated with a variety of orthogonal detection methodologies. The relationships between structure, composition, and optical properties of the family of RE-MOFs can be used to create a large library of rationally designed, highly complex, difficult to counterfeit optical tags.
An optical tag comprising a rare earth metal-organic framework, wherein the rare earth metal-organic framework comprises two or more different rare earth metals arranged in polynuclear metal clusters connected by carboxylic acid-based linkers.
A method to identify or track an object, comprising;
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.