Research: A breath reveals a hidden image in anti-counterfeit drug labels

05 September 2014

Counterfeit drugs, which at best contain wrong doses and at worst are toxic, are thought to kill more than 700,000 people per year. To fight back against these and other forms of counterfeiting, researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) USA and in South Korea have developed a way to make labels that change when you breathe on them, revealing a hidden image.
The method requires access to sophisticated equipment that can create very tiny features, roughly 500 times smaller than the width of a human hair. But once the template is made, labels can be printed in large rolls at a cost of roughly one dollar per square inch (Press Release University of Michigan, 6 August 2014).
Click here for the press release.

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