Chem
ArticleChemoselective Synthesis of Uniform Sequence-Coded Polyurethanes and Their Use as Molecular Tags
The Bigger Picture
Product identification is an important topic in modern consumption societies. Indeed, the massive production of counterfeit goods leads to major economic losses and represents a threat to health and the environment. Thus, anti-counterfeiting technologies are crucial in many areas such as the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food, and chemical industries. In particular, methods allowing product labeling at the nano or molecular scale are promising because they may not be easy to mimic. For example, synthetic polymers containing defined sequences of monomers can be used as molecular barcodes for product identification. Here, we report that digital sequences can be written at the molecular level on polyurethanes, which are cheap commodity plastics, using a very simple synthesis procedure. Moreover, the binary sequences formed can be easily deciphered by mass spectrometry. These coded polyurethanes can be used as molecular tags and blended in small amounts in other plastic materials.
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