An innovative method to protect the authenticity of medicinal products through photoluminescent coding

An innovative method to protect the authenticity of medicinal products through photoluminescent coding

Poster

Katya Hristova, Irena Kostova, Dancho Tonchev
University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski“

The distribution and use of counterfeit medicinal products deprivate thousands of lives every year. Illegally produced and correspondingly low-quality medicines are becoming a serious problem for the whole world, therefore the search for new, fast, easy, reliable, and cheap methods of drug screening is of vital importance. At this stage, effective measures to combat this type of crime have not been established. Different methods are proposed to deal with this problem, but the main method that is currently in place is to encode the goods using QR codes, which make the medicines easy to track, but these codes can be subject to counterfeiting. The present research aims to propose a way to ensure the safety of medicinal products through the synthesis of luminescent inorganic materials with individual fluorescence responses and the possibility of creating "hidden" protection. The fact that rare earth ions emit fluorescence at a specific wavelength and with a specific coloration, is what makes them unique and difficult to counterfeit. This report uses yttrium borates doped with rare-earth europium ions, which are synthesized by using a microwave-assisted method under certain conditions, and the resulting powder materials can be incorporated into drug cartons, such as by ultraviolet or infrared irradiation source, they respond with luminescence, making them difficult to counterfeit.
Keywords: Medicinal products, counterfeiting, yttrium borates, packaging