Putting Ink into Polyion Micelles: Full-Color Anticounterfeiting with Water/Organic Solvent Dual Resistance

Abstract

Anti-counterfeiting paintings are usually with limited colors, easy blurring, and need to be dispersed in environmental unfriendly organic solvent. We report a set of water-based polyion micellar ink to solve all these problems. Upon complexation reversible coordination polymers formed with rare earth metal ions Eu3+, Tb3+ and aggregation-induced emission (AIE) ligand TPE-L2EO4 with oppositely charged block polyelectrolyte P2MVP29-b-PEO205, we are able to generate polyion micelles displaying three elementary emission color of red(R) (Φ_(Eu^(3+) )=24%), green(G)( Φ_(Tb^(3+) )=7%) and blue(B) 〖(Φ〗_TPE=9%). Full-spectrum emission and white light emitting (0.34,0.34) become possible by simply mixing the R, G, B micelles at desired fraction. Strikingly, the micellar inks remain stable even after soaking in water or organic solvents (ethyl acetate, ethanol etc.) for 24 hours. We envision that polyion micelles would open a new paradigm in the field of anti-counterfeiting.