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Authors

KIM, SUNG CHEOL

Issue Date

2025-12

Publisher

SPRINGERNATURE

Citation

논문 ADVANCED COMPOSITES AND HYBRID MATERIALS, v.9, no.2026, pp.24-24

Journal Title

ADVANCED COMPOSITES AND HYBRID MATERIALS

Volume

9

Number

2026

Start Page

24

End Page

24

DOI

10.1007/s42114-025-01534-4

ISSN

2522-0128

Abstract

Counterfeiting has rapidly evolved with advances in manufacturing and digital replication technologies, posing serious challenges across various sectors, including pharmaceuticals, electronics, textiles, finance, and food. Traditional anti-counterfeiting methods such as holograms, barcodes, and radio frequency identification tags have become increasingly vulnerable to high-resolution reproduction techniques, necessitating innovative solutions. Fluorescent materials have emerged as particularly promising candidates due to their tunable optical responses, hidden features under normal light, and highly complex, multi-layered security signals that are difficult to replicate. In this review, we comprehensively summarize recent progress in fluorescence-based anti-counterfeiting technologies, classifying them into three major categories: organic, inorganic, and nanomaterial systems. Organic materials, including aggregation-induced emission luminogens, spiropyrans, single-benzene-based fluorophores, polymers, hydrogels, and proteins, offer versatile molecular design, high responsiveness to external stimuli, and biocompatibility, making them suitable for on-dose pharmaceutical security. Inorganic systems, such as metal complexes, metal-organic frameworks, and crystalline materials, provide long lifetimes, excellent thermal and photochemical stability, and multiparameter readouts. Nanomaterials, including quantum dots, carbon dots, nanoparticles, and nanoclusters, leverage size-dependent emission, surface functionalization, and multimodal properties to enable advanced and dynamic security patterns. Beyond the materials themselves, integration with printing, coating, fiber embedding, smartphone-based readers, and artificial intelligence-assisted detection highlights the translational potential of these approaches for real-world deployment. Emerging directions, such as multimodal fluorescence, physically unclonable functions, edible and biocompatible tags, and environmentally sustainable systems, further expand the scope of application. Collectively, this review provides a forward-looking framework that not only summarizes the current state of the art but also outlines future strategies for developing programmable, robust, and user-friendly fluorescent anti-counterfeiting technologies.