High-tech security inks

The fascinating and astonishing high-tech properties of innovative security inks enhance the protection and integrity of securities and bonds. Printing inks can prevent forgery and manipulation, they can act as a code, can be fluorescent or absorb certain wavelengths.

Gleitsmann security inks exploit special coloured pigments and the physical properties of light. Only after being manipulated in a certain way do lettering or graphic elements become visible, change their appearance or become machine-readable.

Gleitsmann Security Inks produces printing inks for different printing techniques.

The natural world provides any number of precedents for intelligent security inks. Animals and plants use colour for camouflage, or use the effect of colour as a signal.

Octopuses use chemical receptor cells in their suckers to control individual colour cells in their skin. Their colour-change occurs in an instant. They use this as a disguise to protect themselves from their enemies and to communicate with other octopuses. As a defence mechanism, they enshroud predators in an inky secretion. The blue colour of the secretion is caused by copper proteins.

The enormous bill of the toucan is an impressive sight. Both sexes are more or less identical, yet each toucan bill has its own unique colouration. Scientists assume that toucans recognise each other from their bills.