One of the first widespread applications of a cheap and remarkable new light-refracting plastic developed at the University of Arizona may well be such a simple system that cracks down on counterfeit credit cards. The system would save millions for the general public, which ultimately bears the cost of consumer crime. The credit-card security system is the initiative of a group of young researchers working with Optical Sciences Professor Nasser Peyghambarian. Graduate students Boris Volodin and Sandalphon, and Assistant Research Professor Bernard Kippelen collaborate with Peyghambarian in developing applications for the new plastic, which they developed jointly with UA polymer chemists Henry K. Hall Jr. and Anne B. Padias, and then-graduate student Scott R. Lyon. The researchers patented the polymer in 1994.
Polymers are very long molecules.
That is, when two interacting laser beams strike the polymer, almost 100 percent of the resulting third laser beam is bent in another direction. The team first demonstrated that images could be stored as holograms in the new material, then later read out and re-stored, or read out and erased. They also have shown the new material is useful in real-time optical correlation, or finding the match for a single object in a vast field of reference data. The UA optical sciences group worked with University of Connecticut engineer Bahram Javidi on the idea. The authenticity of a credit card or any other document could be verified by placing somewhere on the card a clear plastic mask, invisible to the naked eye, or a camera that bears an optical pattern unique to the issuing bank or company.