The
ink is mightier than the pen – against forgery
Inks
which cannot be photocopied – to confound bank-note
forgers – are exciting printers of most of the world's
major currencies. A team from colour chemistry, led by
Professor David Lewis and Dr Long Lin, has created an
ink which changes colour when copied or scanned, to prevent
forgers colour matching banknotes.
"There
are already hundreds of security measures in place for
banknotes," said Professor Lewis. "But these
don't stop forgeries – some estimates put the number
of forged banknotes as high as 5%. In a busy nightclub,
for example, it's hard to check the holograms, metallic
strips or even just to judge by eye. Our new ink would
make it much harder for forgers to produce banknotes at
all."
Forgers
sometimes copy or scan notes, and work on the digital
image to find an exact colour match. With the new inks,
this would be impossible.
A
'magic pen', which can wipe out ink on forged notes has
been developed by the colour chemistry team. They have
also created an ink which could make James Bond jealous:
used in an ordinary inkjet printer, the typing will stay
visible for a set period, then just fade off the page.
A
joint venture company, Lumenia, has been set up by Leeds
Innovations and Xennia to exploit these technologies.
Pictured
above is head of colour chemistry David Lewis (above right)
with Master of the Clothworkers' Company Richard Saunders
and chair of the Clothworkers' Foundation trusts and grants
committee Peter Rawson (l-r) during a recent visit to
celebrate the opening of the colour chemistry link building,
which the Foundation helped to fund.
