Advanced anti-counterfeiting labels have aroused an intensive interest in packaging industry to avoid the serious issue of counterfeit. However, the preparation and cost of the existing labels associated with the drawbacks, including the complex and high-cost equipment, limit the protection of the authenticity of goods. Herein, we developed a series of anti-counterfeiting labels based on multicolor upconversion micro-particles (UCMPs) inks via straightforward and low-cost solutions, including spin-coating, stamping and screen printing. The UCMPs were synthesized through a facile hydrothermal process and displayed tunable red (R), green (G) and blue (B) color by doping different lanthanide ions, which are Er3+/Tm3+, Yb3+/Er3+ and Yb3+/Tm3+ in NaYF4 hosts, respectively. The optimal UCMPs inks were deposited on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate to obtain transparent anti-counterfeiting labels possessing higher transmittance, stronger upconversion fluorescence intensity and good photostability. Under ambient conditions, the patterns and films were transparent, but could exhibit multicolor light under 980 nm laser excitation. They can be used as anti-counterfeiting labels for die-cutting packages to further elevate the security of goods. The tunable and designable transparent anti-counterfeiting labels based on RGB UCMPs inks exhibit the merits of low-cost, easy-manufacture and versatility, underlying the practical application in the field of anti-counterfeiting.
Liang Huang,Ziyu Shi,Daquan Li,Chenxing Jiang,Xuexue Wang,Mei Huang,Jing Wang,Bin Su
Considering that hue-recognition has drawn increasing research interests for visual detection because of its high accuracy and flexible analysis modalities, the exploration of a rational hue-recognition sensing system is highly demanded. Here, we report a hue-recognition-based lateral flow immunoassay (HLFIA) by ratiometric modulation of emission from two nanoprobes, in which red-emitting ruthenium(II)-doped dendritic silica colloids and green-emitting gold nanoclusters function as reporter and reference, respectively. The HLFIA strip can generate a visually discernible green-to-orange-red color gradient alternation, enabling the naked-eye semiquantitative inspection of successive C-reactive protein (CRP) concentration and concentration intervals (0–50, 50–150, and 150–500 ng mL–1) with a visual detection limit of 10 ng mL–1. By integrating with a customized smartphone-based portable imaging device and RGB color space recognition, the precise quantification of CRP can be achieved with a linear range of 0–100 ng mL–1 and a limit of detection of 0.64 ng mL–1. The HLFIA strip is robust and validated for CRP detection in real serum, holding great promise for noninstrumental and deprofessionalized point-of-care immunoassay of biomarkers.