Proceedings Article | 24 September 2005
KEYWORDS: Holography, Optical components, Visualization, Holograms, Computer security, Microscopes, Switches, Standards development, Electron beam lithography, Optical design
Invented in late 1940s, holography has played a very important role in many technical applications. While the 60s and 70s belonged to, say, a classical period of the holography and diffractive optics (optical elements, lenses, beam splitters), the last two decades have shown an enormous expansion of various mainly synthetically designed and created holographic elements. Ever since its invention, holograms have also attracted our attention, because of their true three-dimension perception of a depicted object and related optical features. These phenomena caused, the holograms have become very well and easily publicly recognized, but still very difficult to falsify. Holography based optically variable microstructures and related advanced anti-counterfeit measures are thus ones of the leading features in security elements used for the protection against falsification of valuables, documents (banknotes, visa, passports, ID cards, tax stamps, etc.), serving for the protection of interests and many others.
Our talk deals with the survey of currently exploited technologies to produce several protective optical elements. A special attention will be paid to the synthetically developed special optical elements by means of the unique technology - the electron beam lithography, what is one of the world's most advanced technologies used for the protection against falsification. The computer-synthesized security elements are recorded with an incredible resolution of up to 500.000 dpi and are specially developed for the security of the most important state valuables and documents. Finally, we shall discuss some technological possibilities for its future development.
