Professor develops plastic printing process

A professor at the University of Warwick has developed new technology that allows images to be embedded in plastic.

Gordon Smith’s innovation, which he has been testing out on credit card like plastics, could prevent the cloning of credit cards and cars being stolen.

Copying a credit card number with its magnetic strip is a relatively simple process, but Smith’s new technology would stop this from happening.

“The image is non-cloneable because if you tried to get the image out of the plastic then you would just destroy it.”

Smith went on to explain the process behind the technology.

When the plastic used to make a credit card is molten “you can manipulate the pigmentation within (the plastic) and the particles within it so that you can form it into images and data.

“It’s not a printing or anything on the surface. It is an image that can be created in any shape whatsoever.”

Second year History student Harry Haslam said: “if the positives outweigh the negatives then I see no reason why it won’t benefit the consumer, even if the technology is still relatively young.”

The technology has also been the subject of interest from the car industry.

Codes could be embedded in the plastic components of automobiles to track them should they be stolen.

It was also suggested that such codes could provide embedded “fingerprints” to identify all of a person’s important possessions, such as a mobile phone.

The technology still has some way to go before it can be applied practically.

The images remain imprecise and in black and white, but Smith says colour images are on the way, and is looking to form partnerships with businesses “where we can show (a company) how to innovate it further.”