Photocured Biomimetic Microtextured Hydrogels for Rewritable and Physically Unclonable Anti-counterfeiting Labels.

Abstract

With growing demand for secure information storage and authentication, integrating static physical fingerprints with dynamic rewritable information within a single carrier remains a challenge. This study proposes a multilevel anti-counterfeiting strategy based on biomimetic microtextured polymer hydrogels (MTPHs). Soft replication of feather-derived microhooks transfers hierarchical biomimetic microtextures into photocurable hydrogels, where local biological variations and replication-induced microvariations serve as physical entropy sources for PUF authentication. Incorporating the photochromic unit Mo7 into the network endows the material with rewritable photochromic properties and enables a burn-after-use security function. Dual-mode fluorescence encoding is further engineered through lanthanide ion doping, enabling orthogonal information display under visible and UV excitation. By combining rewritable photochromism, dual-mode fluorescence, PUF microtextures, and VGG-based texture classification, the system enables hierarchical authentication across macroscopic texture classification, mesoscopic dynamic information readout, and microscopic PUF fingerprint verification. As a proof of concept, smart admission tickets are demonstrated for access control, zone classification, and identity verification. This work provides an integrated material and authentication platform for multilevel anti-counterfeiting and IoT-oriented secure identification.