01
Rare-earth composition & ratios
Change host and dopant combinations to shift excitation pathways, emission wavelengths, intensity ratios and interaction between energy levels.
Technology
Program the crystal.
Program the response.
Intelligent Material connects the physical world with the digital world. Our inert rare-earth crystals convert energy into measurable information. We engineer the crystal itself, changing how it interacts with light, energy, magnetic fields and its surrounding environment.
Real IMS crystals · TEM
The material is not the label.
The material is the technology.
The material is the technology.
The most powerful use of Intelligent Material is becoming part of the product itself. Once the crystal is inside a polymer, coating, ink, oil, fiber, biological assay or other compatible system, the product carries a persistent engineered response from the moment it is made.
We can encode information into composition, structure, wavelength response, lifetime, excitation dependence, magnetic behavior and core/shell interactions.
The result is a material that can convert energy, carry information and remain physically connected to the thing being measured, authenticated or controlled.
Programmable material
Six ways we engineer the response.
IMS treats each crystal as a multidimensional information carrier whose response can be engineered for a specific purpose.
02
Size & morphology
Control particle dimensions, crystal facets and uniformity to influence optical behavior, surface interactions, processing and self-assembly.
03
Temporal response
Engineer rise, decay, persistence and lifetime behavior so time itself becomes another dimension of the material identity.
04
Magnetic properties
Combine optical and magnetic behavior to create materials that can be identified optically while responding to magnetic fields or separation methods.
05
Core / shell interactions
Separate, couple or enhance functions across nanoscale interfaces, including energy transfer, isolation, surface chemistry and plasmonic effects.
06
Optical power density
Vary excitation power density and measure how emission responds. The intensity-dependent response curve becomes another way to identify the material.
Energy conversion
Same crystal platform. Two directions of energy flow.
Rare-earth ions occupy discrete electronic energy states. By choosing the host, dopants and concentrations, we engineer which wavelengths are absorbed and which wavelengths are emitted.
Upconversion
Infrared in. Visible out.
Two or more lower-energy excitation events can populate higher excited states. The material can then emit a shorter-wavelength photon, allowing invisible near-infrared excitation to produce visible light.
Visible
980 nm · IR
UVVISIBLEIR
Downconversion
Higher-energy light in. Longer wavelength out.
A higher-energy photon is absorbed and the excited ion relaxes before emitting at a longer wavelength. We can engineer this response across UV, visible and infrared regions.
UV / blue
Visible / IR
UVVISIBLEIR
THE CODE SPACE · AUTHENTICATION
Four shapes. Six emitters. One antenna.
A counterfeiter can match a color. Matching the crystal is another story. Intelligent Material grows the same rare-earth emitter as rods, hexagonal plates, diamonds or spheres, and decides whether to build in ytterbium, the antenna that soaks up 980 nm light and hands it to the emitter. Spin the lock, then watch the reader check every layer.
Outer emitterMiddle crystal shapeInner Yb³⁺ antennaTap a ring to turn it
Laser test which lasers wake it
365 nm
–
808 nm
–
980 nm
–
1550 nm
–
Color
Polarization
READER VERDICTSpin the lock to begin.
Coloremission lines
Laserswhich wake it
Polarizationreads the shape
Risereads the Yb
4×6×3
Shapes, emitters and Yb antenna levels: 72 crystal identities.
×7
Add seven lifetimes and it becomes 504 distinct crystals.
4
Independent checks per read: color, lasers, polarization and rise. All must match.
377 bn
Codes when a mark mixes crystals, up to one per emitter: (4 × 3 × 7 + 1)⁶ − 1.
Illustration. Laser responses, polarization patterns and rise times are simplified for display, Nd³⁺ infrared emission is shown in false color, and timing is slowed for the eye. Not a validated panel.
SHAPE
A shape you can read with light.
Rare-earth crystals are not the same in every direction. A rod glows brightest when the reader's polarizer lines up with its long axis, a flat hexagonal plate prefers the crossing direction, a faceted diamond answers in four lobes, and a sphere looks the same from every angle. Turn a polarizer and the shape shows up in the signal, with no microscope.
Rodstrong, along the long axis
Hex platein the plate, across the axis
Diamondfour-fold
Spherenone, the same at every angle
ANTENNA
Yb³⁺ drinks the light, then passes it on.
Ytterbium absorbs 980 nm light roughly ten times better than erbium does, then hands the energy to its emitter neighbor. Leave it out and the very same Er³⁺ crystal barely notices 980 nm and needs 1550 nm instead. How much Yb is built in also sets how fast the glow rises, a timing signature a copy has to match.
Reader logic: U.S. Patent 11,435,228 B2 ↗AND IF YOU WANT EVEN MORE COMBINATIONS?
Open the crystal. Add shells.
Everything above was one solid crystal. Grow layers around it, a core and three shells, each with its own ingredient, and let energy hop from layer to layer. Every layer multiplies the choices. That is where the combinations go through the roof.
SHELL LAB · CORE / SHELL / SHELL / SHELL
A new code for every widget.
Build a crystal layer by layer. The reader does not just see a color: it watches how the light rises and decays over time, and how the answer changes as the laser power goes up. Layers that pass energy to each other leave their own fingerprint in both. Pick a recipe, or let the mint make a fresh one.
Cross-section core out to shell 3
Recipe ingredient · amount · thickness
Emission wavelength × time
Power power × time
LASER
THIS WIDGET'S CODE
IMS-····-····
–emission peaks
–lasers that wake it
–power slope
–rise / decay
111
Choices per layer: nine ingredients, including a magnetic layer, at four amounts, or inert, each in three thicknesses.
1114
A core and three shells: 152 million layer recipes.
×4
Shapes: 607 million single-crystal codes, each read by color, laser, power and time, with a magnetic check on top.
10157
Blend up to 20 of them in one ink. Roughly 1077 times the atoms in the observable universe.
Illustration. Energy-transfer efficiencies, power slopes, lifetimes and spectra come from a simplified model of layered upconverting crystals, not measured data; real recipes are designed and verified in the lab. Plots are drawn in the style of time-resolved spectra, with intensity mapped to color.
WHY UNIFORM MATTERS
Their glob. Our crystals.
Most taggants are solid-state phosphors: fired, crushed and milled into jagged grains several microns across, no two alike. Intelligent Material grows every particle to the same size and shape. Same field of view, same laser spot scanning across both:
Solid-state, milled typical 2 to 6 µm grains
Disordered, irregular, microscopic.
Signal along the scanvaries
Intelligent Material ~250 nm, one shape
Uniform, controllable morphology, nanoscopic.
Signal along the scansteady
Every spot reads the same codeA reader that lands anywhere on the mark gets the same answer, so verification is fast and repeatable.
Shells need a uniform coreYou cannot grow an even two-nanometer shell on a five-micron rock. Uniform cores are what make layered codes possible.
Small enough to go anywhereInkjet nozzles, fibers, coatings and clear plastics, without clogging, settling or showing.
U.S. PATENT 9,181,477 B2 · GRANTED 2015Morphologically and size uniform monodisperse particles and their shape-directed self-assemblyJoshua E. Collins, Howard Y. Bell, Xingchen Ye, Christopher B. Murray. Intelligent Material Solutions and the University of Pennsylvania. Family includes US 9,758,724 and US 10,273,407. ↗
PNAS · 2010Morphologically controlled synthesis of colloidal upconversion nanophosphors and their shape-directed self-assemblyYe, Collins (IMS) and colleagues, University of Pennsylvania. Rods, plates and hexagonal prisms of one size, assembling into ordered superlattices. ↗
The code space · scroll to turn the dials
One lock. It keeps growing.
Every crystal is a combination lock: each design choice is another dial. Scroll down and watch the lock gain dials, first inside one crystal, then in the shells grown around it, and finally when a customer mixes several crystals into one mark. Each new dial multiplies the number of codes.
One crystal
72
6 emitters × 4 shapes × 3 antenna levels
Dial 1 · 2 · 3
One crystal, three dials.
Pick the rare-earth emitter, the crystal shape and how much ytterbium antenna to build in. The reader checks all three: color, polarization and how fast the glow rises.
6 emitters4 shapes3 antenna levels
6 × 4 × 3 = 72 different crystals.
Dial 4
Add timing.
Change the size or the dopant level and the glow fades at a different speed. Seven lifetimes the reader can tell apart add a fourth dial to the same crystal.
7 lifetimes
72 × 7 = 504 crystals.
Dials 5 · 6 · 7 · 8
Open the crystal: add shells.
Grow a core and three shells around it, each with its own ingredient, amount and thickness, and let energy hop from layer to layer. Every shell is a new dial with 111 positions. The lock gets much bigger.
coreshell 1shell 2shell 3
111⁴ layer recipes × 4 shapes ≈ 607 million single-crystal codes.
The full library
Blend from everything.
Now open the whole library of shelled crystals and blend up to twenty of them in one ink. The lock becomes a galaxy of locks: more codes than there are atoms in the observable universe, by a factor of about 1077.
Illustration. Counts assume every combination can be told apart by the reader; real code books are designed with margins between codes.
Where the code goes
One powder. Into almost anything.
The crystals are inert, uniform and smaller than a wavelength of light, so they disperse into the materials manufacturers already use, at parts per million to thousandths of a percent. The code is made into the product, not stuck on afterwards.
Inks and coatings
Inks
The most common home for the code. The crystals are smaller than the nozzles and pigments the ink already carries.
- Thermal and piezo inkjet coding, serialization, cartons
- Continuous inkjet bottles, cans, cables, eggs
- Flexographic labels, flexible packaging
- Offset and lithographic cartons, leaflets
- Gravure long-run packaging, tobacco
- Screen glass, textiles, electronics
- Intaglio banknotes, security documents
- UV- and EB-curable fast lines, plastics
- Water- and solvent-based general packaging
- Toner laser and digital presses
- Varnish and overprint a clear layer over any print
- Conformal coating circuit boards
Masterbatch
Plastics
Compounded into masterbatch pellets, so every molded or extruded part carries the code from the first shot.
- Injection molding
- Extrusion and film
- Blow-molded bottles
- Caps and closures
- 3D-printing filament
Spun in
Fibers
Added with a spinning ingredient at about 5 ppm in the finished fiber, and readable all the way to the finished garment.
- Stretch fiber
- Polyester
- Nylon
- Nonwovens
- Yarn finishes
Melt and surface
Metal
Blended into the melt to prove origin, even after the metal comes back as scrap, or carried in coatings on the surface.
- Aluminum and alloy melts
- Powder coatings
- Anodizing seals
- Additive-manufacturing powders
Dispersed
Oil
Coated crystals disperse in oils and fuels to mark the product, or are injected to trace where fluid flows underground.
- Fuel and tax markers
- Lubricants
- Reservoir and well tracers
- Cosmetic and food-grade oils*
Bonded in
Glue
In the adhesive that seals a package, so opening it leaves a measurable trace. Surgical packaging uses about 0.001%.
- Seal and lidding adhesives
- Pressure-sensitive labels
- Hot melt
- Epoxies and potting
Not on the list?
Tell us your material.
Anything that can hold a fine, inert powder is a candidate: paper, glass, ceramics, rubber, wax, paints, even cement. We test the crystal in your own material first.
Start with a sample →*Any food, cosmetic or medical use requires its own safety and regulatory review. Loadings shown are typical examples.
Crystal Lab
Start with the response you want.
The Crystal Lab, run by Intelligent Material Solutions, is where partners design a crystal and see what it does: choose the host, the rare-earth ions and the lasers, then read the color, spectrum and timing it produces.
01ChooseHost lattice
Define the physical and chemical environment around the active ions.
→
02ProgramRare-earth ions + ratios
Select activators and sensitizers and tune their concentrations.
→
03ExciteChoose wavelength
UV, visible, 808, 940, 980, 1550 nm and other optical inputs.
→
04ReadEngineer the response
Spectrum, lifetime, power-density response, magnetics and core/shell behavior.
A materials lineage
From the synthesis science that transformed quantum dots to IMS uniform-crystal IP.
Christopher B. Murray is an inventor on the IMS / University of Pennsylvania uniform-crystal patent family. He was also first author, with David Norris and Moungi Bawendi, on the landmark 1993 paper describing a controlled synthesis of nearly monodisperse semiconductor nanocrystals.
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognized Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Aleksey Yekimov for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. The Nobel background specifically identifies Bawendi's 1993 advance in producing high-quality quantum dots with controlled size. IMS's work applies the same broader lesson to a different materials platform: precise control of nanoscale composition, size and architecture creates precise control of material behavior.
1993 · JACS
Murray, Norris & Bawendi
Synthesis and characterization of nearly monodisperse CdE semiconductor nanocrystallites.
Read the paper · 2023 Nobel Prize context
IMS / Penn patentUS 9,181,477
Morphologically and size uniform monodisperse particles and their shape-directed self-assembly. Inventors include Howard Bell, Joshua Collins, Xingchen Ye and Christopher Bruce Murray.
Published science
Control the shape. The crystals do the rest.
Intelligent Material grew out of work with Christopher Murray's group at the University of Pennsylvania. Two peer-reviewed papers, in PNAS and Nature Chemistry, both co-authored by Joshua E. Collins of Intelligent Material Solutions, show the core idea: grow every crystal to the same size and shape, and they arrange themselves into near-perfect patterns, with no one placing them.
PNAS · 2010 · vol. 107, pp. 22430–22435Morphologically controlled synthesis of colloidal upconversion nanophosphors and their shape-directed self-assemblyX. Ye, J. E. Collins (IMS), Y. Kang, J. Chen, D. T. N. Chen, A. G. Yodh, C. B. MurrayRead the paper ↗
One recipe, four shapes.
In a single flask, the team grew upconverting crystals of sodium yttrium fluoride, the same host used in many IMS crystals, doped with ytterbium and erbium for green light or ytterbium and thulium for blue. Changing just the reaction time and the ratio of sodium to rare earth turned spheres into rods, hexagonal prisms and flat plates.
SpheresRodsPrismsPlates
133 ± 5 nmedge of the hexagonal plates: a spread of under 4%
~200 µm²single ordered domains: thousands of plates, all in step
One drop15 µL of crystals floated on liquid, then left to dry
US 9,181,477the same work underpins IMS's uniform-crystal patent family
Nature Chemistry · 2013 · vol. 5, pp. 466–473Competition of shape and interaction patchiness for self-assembling nanoplatesX. Ye, J. Chen, M. Engel, A. J. Millan, W. Li, L. Qi, G. Xing, J. E. Collins (IMS), C. R. Kagan, J. Li, S. C. Glotzer, C. B. MurrayRead the paper ↗
Drawn by IMS from the paper's findings. Plates with only shape to go on pack one way; when unlike edges attract more strongly (gold), rows flip and alternate. That alternating pattern is what the electron microscope showed, and what the computer simulations predicted.
Shape is only half the story.
The 2013 paper moved to flat rare-earth fluoride plates, from lanthanum through holmium, shaped as rhombs and stretched hexagons. Pure geometry predicts one packing. The real plates often chose another.
The reason is the coating. Each crystal wears a fringe of oleic acid, and computer models showed it grips one kind of edge almost six times harder than another: about 0.70 versus 0.12 electron-volts. Edges that are "stickier" than others, or patchy, compete with shape to decide the pattern.
Strong edge · 0.70 eV · both oxygens bind
Weak edge · 0.12 eV · one oxygen binds
La → Horare-earth fluoride plates, from lanthanum through holmium, grown as rhombs and stretched hexagons
~6×stronger grip of the coating on one kind of edge: about 0.70 vs 0.12 eV
5,000particles in a computer model that reproduced the lab's pattern, grain for grain
12 authorssynthesis chemists, simulation experts and IMS, led by the Murray group at Penn
Why it matters for Intelligent Material
Every crystal reads the sameWhen size and shape are this uniform, every particle answers the reader alike. A code read anywhere on a product gives the same answer.
Edges set the chemistryKnowing which faces hold the coating, and how tightly, is what lets crystals disperse evenly in an ink, a polymer or a fiber instead of clumping.
Shells need a perfect coreAn even two-nanometer shell can only grow on a uniform core. These syntheses are what make layered, multi-shell codes possible.
Order is information tooCrystals that line up by themselves can form patterns, alignments and arrays that add another layer to what a reader can see.
All illustrations drawn by IMS from the findings of Ye et al., PNAS 107, 22430–22435 (2010) and Ye et al., Nature Chemistry 5, 466–473 (2013). Read the papers for the original data and micrographs.
Intellectual property
Protected from crystal synthesis to information readout.
The portfolio spans uniform particles and assemblies, temporal authentication, rare-earth materials in articles and systems for identifying Intelligent Material from its engineered emission response.
Morphologically and size-uniform particles
Monodisperse particles and shape-directed self-assembly developed with the University of Pennsylvania.
Continuations: shape, conversion and assemblies
Related claims involving up- and down-converting particles, polyhedral morphology and organized superlattices.
Identity in rise and decay
Authentication using engineered temporal characteristics of the emission response.
Rare-earth materials in transaction cards
IR-blocking inks incorporating rare-earth Intelligent Material for article and transaction-card authentication.
Identification from emission response
Methods and systems for identifying Intelligent Material from changes in emission response under controlled illumination.
Give your product intelligence at the beginning.
Start with the material itself. NovaVera and IMS define the excitation, emission, timing, power-density, magnetic and structural response your application needs, then supply it in the ink, plastic, fiber or coating you already use.