Team
The project PHOTAG is financied by Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) within the action" Missione 4 Istruzione e ricerca – Componente 2 “Dalla ricerca all’impresa” Investimento 1.1 Fondo per il Programma Nazionale di Ricerca e Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN)” del PNRR – Finanziato dall’Unione Europea – NextGenerationEU".
The PHOTAG's team is composed by two young units of the National Institute of Metrological Research of Italy, INRiM, and National Research Council of Italy, CNR.
Dr. Sara Nocentini (INRiM) is the principal investigator (PI) and Dr. Antonio Ferraro (CNR) is the co-PI.
INRIM is the National Metrology Institute of Italy. In the contex of PHOTAG project, the knowledge in photonic polymeric materials of the INRiM unit (Division of Metrology of Innovative Materials and Life Science) represents a solid ground for the study and fabrication of responsive 3D materials for optical storage in smart labels. In the last years, the PI combined her research interests in reconfigurable materials and classical cryptographic physical unclonable functions (PUFs). The PI gained experience in physical unclonable functions during the projects financed by Ente cassa di Risparmio on “Sistemi fotonici complessi per le tecnologie dell'informazione e della comunicazione” led by Dr. F. Riboli and by AFOSR on “Highly secure nonlinear optical PUFs” led by Prof. Ulrich Ruehrmair. In particular, a setup for experimental characterization has been built and analysis with different metrics have been done on the performance of optical strong PUFs.
Institute of Nanotechnology of National Research Council of Italy (CNR) secondary unit of Rende (CS) originates from the historic Liquid Crystal Laboratory (LiCryL) active in soft matter sciences since the early 1980s. It has a consolidated experience and know-how in the field of nanostructured materials for advanced optics, microfluidics, sensors, micro-nano manufacturing and development of devices containing LCs proven by publications in international journals and patents. The co-PI participates in the project “DEMETRA – Sviluppo di tecnologie di materiali e di tracciabilità per la sicurezza e la qualità dei cibi” led by Rina Consulting company for the development of new plasmonic and metamaterial-based smart tags having different security levels. The first level is represented by the random morphology arising during fabrication and analyzed by means of image recognition algorithm. The second one is introduced by the peculiar spectral response given by a specific structural coloration whose optical imaging represents the third level.