A nanoscale printing technique developed by engineers at Glasgow University could have wide-ranging applications in data storage, digital imaging and anti-counterfeiting measures, it hasbeen claimed.

The breakthrough, detailed in a paper published in the Journal of Advanced Functional Materials, represents an advance in the field of structural colour printing, whereby structurednanomaterials are used to render colours.

The Glasgow technique allows the 'printing' of two entirely different, but highly detailed, full-colour images within the same surface area, something which the group claims has never been donebefore using 'structural colour' techniques. This has been achieved by the development of special nano-scale plasmonic colour filters that display different colours depending on the orientation ofthe light which hits it.

According to the team, the process enables the creation of far-higher resolution prints than is possible with conventional printing techniques. For instance, whilst a typical printed image in amagazine might consist of around 300 coloured dots per inch of page, a page 'printed' with structural colour techniques could reach a resolution of 100,000 DPI or more.

Clark said that the technology has a number of potential applications, including the development of new anti-counterfeiting materials for banknotes. "A very good example of where we see atechnology like this being used is anti-counterfeiting whereby you can create incredibly high-resolution images of over 100,000 dpi, embed those on a surface like a bank note and you would have thisincredibly difficult to forge hi-res image that when you shine different polarisation of life at the surface you would get different images back," he said.

What's more, because the colours don't fade even when exposed to the harshest sunlight the process also holds great promise for long-term data archival. "We've worked out that we could store 1.46Gb per square centimetre, so a single A4 sheet could hold more than 900 Gb of data," added Clark.

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