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Testing a nano-barcodes marking technology for identification and

protection of the mechanical products
To cite this article: O Y Ganzulenko and A P Petkova 2020 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1582 012032

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High-Tech and Innovations in Research and Manufacturing (HIRM-2020) IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1582 (2020) 012032 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1582/1/012032

Testing a nano-barcodes marking technology for identification

and protection of the mechanical products

O Y Ganzulenko and A P Petkova

Saint Petersburg Mining University, 2, 21st line of Vasilevskiy Island, Saint
Petersburg, 199106, Russia

E-mail: oxana_ganza@mail.ru

Abstract. The article presents a technology for application and identification of nano-barcodes
on the surface of industrial products. The essence of this process is to modify the surface of
metallic materials by exposure to pulsed laser radiation. As a result of such exposure, the
modified surface contains small labels, allowing storing encoded information directly on the
machine part, bypassing intermediate carriers. The laser-applied labels are formed using
software and encode informative data. The encoding of the input information ensures the
uniqueness of the applied nano-barcodes. The proposed technology allows us to apply such
unique labels on the materials surface for accounting and identification of industrial products.
The proposed marking technology allows us to place a significant amount of information in a
small area. Special software has been developed for decoding the information from the applied
nano-barcode developed. Studies have been performed that have been conducted to determine
the thickness of the marked symbols formed on the materials surfaces and the reliability of the
applied symbols. There are also recommendations on the usage of the technology given for
direct labeling of materials with the application of information with high recording density for
various industries.

1. Introduction
The paper proposes a methodology for applying marking symbols directly on the machine parts and
assemblies. As a result of exposure to the material surface of pulsed laser radiation, surface
modification occurs, leading to the formation of the specified marking symbols. The presented
technology makes it possible to obtain contrasting, readable images of bar codes directly on the
surface of products by controlling the main parameters of the laser marking complex.
Considerable attention globally is paid to modern technologies for applying marking by a pulsed
laser due to surface modification of materials [1-3]. Large and important volumes of information are
conveniently stored and transmitted through barcode and binary coding.
The appearance of barcodes made it possible to use the mechanical engineering product labeling
and its identification for the logistic accounting and the creation of the control databases. Currently,
the following are the most used among all developed two-dimensional multiple and matrix barcodes:
PDF417, Aztec Code, Data Matrix, QR Code, Maxi Code (Figure 1). However, the existing methods
of the marking metal products are mainly based on the labeling of different intermediate carriers -
labels, tags, packaging.

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High-Tech and Innovations in Research and Manufacturing (HIRM-2020) IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1582 (2020) 012032 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1582/1/012032

Figure 1. Types of the two-dimensional matrix barcodes

Usage of the two-dimensional matrix barcodes applied directly onto the surface of the finished
products by means of laser radiation provides to the final marked product its identity and makes it
more protected from counterfeiting. Application of two-dimensional high-density barcodes directly on
the product’s surface allows us to solve another important problem – to place the necessary
information on the product, containing a wide range of the product’s characteristics such as conditions
of its manufacture process and operation [4].
However, until now, the direct bar coding technology of the mechanical products using marking
lasers has not been widely used. This is due to the fact that if it is necessary to place a sufficiently
large amount of information into the typical barcode (more than 1000 characters), the overall
dimensions of the two-dimensional matrix barcodes increase noticeably, which do not allow them to
be used for products with small dimensions.
How does the pulsed laser radiation modify the surface of metallic material and how is it possible
to insert so big amount of data in one small-sized label? Figure 2 demonstrates how the modified
metal surface looks like after just one single pulse of laser radiation being applied. There are two spots
from two pulses on the surface of stainless steel, being done with some distance to study the
modifying process. As one can see on the microstructure photograph the pulse imprint has a circular
shape with a border of the fusion line and an area of the heat-affected zone around the print itself.
So, during the laser surface treatment, there is a short-term (tens of nanoseconds) melting and a
very thin contrast oxide films are being formed [5]. Using contrast oxides films, it is possible to create
the marking symbols by modifying the metal material surface.

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High-Tech and Innovations in Research and Manufacturing (HIRM-2020) IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1582 (2020) 012032 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1582/1/012032

Figure 2. The surface of stainless steel after two laser pulses being applied, x500

2. Materials and Methods

By creating a matrix image of contrasting laser imprints on metal surface, a two-dimensional matrix
code with an increased information capacity was developed to provide a more efficient product
protection system. This type of code contains an ultra-high density information data, which can be
recorded directly on the product by the pulsed laser on metal and other surfaces [6, 7]. To fulfill the
requirements to a nano-barcode (NBC), a fundamentally new type of the code graphic design was
developed (Figure 3), which reflects all its functions (ultra-density, multi-purposed, a possibility of
using laser marking technology and the ability to be read relatively easily, including with existing
modern gadgets). The labeling was applied to a stainless steel surface. NBC design has its own system
of the support and alignment elements (an inner square and rectangles around the perimeter of the
frame).
The design feature of the developed nano-barcode is the ability to control the size of the inner
square (Figure 3) depending on the amount of information recorded in the code, as well as the
formation of the visually readable text records and drawings in the inner square, including company
logos. To increase the degree of protection for nano-barcodes, text records and images in the inner
square can be multicolored for different types of metals.

Figure 3. General view of the nano-barcode (NBC).

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High-Tech and Innovations in Research and Manufacturing (HIRM-2020) IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1582 (2020) 012032 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1582/1/012032

The stability and reproducibility of the color characteristics of the resulting marking symbols can
be achieved by determining the technological parameters of the laser marking process depending on
the thermo-physical parameters of the marked material.
The applied nano-barcode ensures its uniqueness by encoding the input information using a random
number generator, which excludes the possibility of reading the recorded text without knowing the
individual encoding key. The proposed marking technology provides the placement of a large amount
of the necessary information on a small product area and successful recognition of the applied nano-
barcode by an original special reader device with much higher resolution compared to existing
standard barcode scanners with their original software for the decryption. The original scanning reader
constructs a structural diagram of the registered NBC image and provides high-density code
recognition. An effectiveness of determining the laser prints coordinates of the image code structure
by means of this scanner ensures a very high percentage of confidence.
The digital image of the high-density code after the recognition is loaded into a special decoding
program. Figure 4 presents the general view of the decoding program work field. This field of the
program presents the area where the code image is located. There is an animation zoom mode, which
can be selected for a clearer perception of the working field of the program. The range zoom is from
100 to 1000% by the initial linear dimensions of the original image. When image zoom is selected
with the scale of 1000%, the code’s image fills the entire working area of the window program [6].

Figure 4. Picture of the nano-barcode in the scale zoom of 1000%.

To ensure the readability of the created images a criterion is proposed for assessing the contrast of
colored characters, obtained on a metal surface and based on an assessment of the oxides film
thickness.

3. Results and Discussion

The contrast oxide films provide the quality and readability of the NDC images. Figure 5 shows the
results of the electronic microscopy used to determine film thickness and structure.
The image in gallium ions (Figure 5) allows us to observe a finely dispersed quasi-amorphous
oxide film under the platinum film, a finely crystalline gas-saturated layer and then the zone of
recrystallized coarse-grained metal below the surface begins. The obtained results allow us to
conclude that during the laser marking formation process of the oxide structures, a quasi-amorphous
nanostructured layer appears on the treated surface, which also finds confirmation in research by other
scientists [8, 9].

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High-Tech and Innovations in Research and Manufacturing (HIRM-2020) IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1582 (2020) 012032 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1582/1/012032

Specialized software was created to perform the process of encoding digital information in the form
of an ultra-compressed nano-barcode [10]. This software allows us to do the following operations:
˗ receive files or create your own files with any digital information to be encoded;
˗ make an information encoding using a code conversion table to obtain a code message;
˗ perform a compression after encoding information;
˗ add a redundant information for the recovery in the case of its loss;
˗ do a complete or partial encryption of the information (depending on the functional purpose of
NBC).
˗

a) 1 - platinum protective film, 2 - oxide film; 3 - b) geometric characteristics of the multilayer oxide
gas saturated layer, 4 - recrystallized metal structure
Figure 5. The surface layer film structure
The described encryption can be carried out using cryptographic algorithms in two stages. The first
one performs the encryption at the byte level using the formation of a polyalphabetic byte cipher with
a different shift value for each byte of the information, the second stage at the bit level bases on the
AES symmetric bit encryption algorithm [11].
In a contrast to the existing two-dimensional codes (such as QR Code and Data Matrix), it is
proposed to use the symmetric and asymmetric file encryption for a nano-barcode to protect the code
data from an unauthorized access. The NBC encryption uses a unique multi-level security system
comparable to the modern cryptographic encryption algorithms such as RSA or AES.
An important additional component of the created coding program also is the ability to control the
inner square size of the nano-barcode depending on the information amount recorded in the code, as
well as the formation of the visually readable text entries and drawings in the inner square, including
such ones as company logos.
The data encoding software for NBC creation allows us to reduce the nano-barcode size over a
wide range, depending on its information capacity. When comparing codes with the same information
capacity (Figures 6, 7), the size of the nano-barcode is noticeably smaller: with a capacity for 10 000
characters the size of NBC is about 37x37 mm, while the size of the QR code exceeded 2000x2000
mm. This fact proves again the ultrahigh recording density of the nano-barcode. In addition, a special
mobile application has been created that runs on the Android OS, which allows us to read and decode
information using cameras of modern smart phones.

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High-Tech and Innovations in Research and Manufacturing (HIRM-2020) IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1582 (2020) 012032 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1582/1/012032

Figure 6. Comparison of the codes informative Figure 7. Comparison of the codes informative
capacity for 1 000 characters: a - NBC; b - capacity for 10 000 characters: a - NBC;
standard QR code b - standard QR code

4. Conclusion
An approved process for implementation of application and identification of a new generation of nano-
barcodes on an industrial scale will create real prerequisites for a sharp reduction in counterfeit
products not only in Russia but also abroad. The proposed marking technology due to its specificity
makes it possible almost completely to eliminate fakes and generate a nano-barcode with a large
amount of the input information on the product itself. This allows, if it is necessary, to have a
complete picture of the technical and operational products characteristics, including the preparation for
an expert opinion in case of emergency failure or the product breaking down.
This technology also can be used in any industrial complex for marking with the purpose of
accounting and control during production: in aviation and automotive industries, heavy and energy
engineering for marking and identification of parts, motors and other equipment; in jewelry industry
for protection, labeling and identification of art objects.
Laser marking technology of nano-bar code application can be used with a wide range of metal
materials; process modes for obtaining high-quality images have been developed. There are also
developments for further recommendations when marking non-metallic materials such as polymers. A
promising direction of research is the expansion of the materials and process modes base into surface
treatment of materials, capable of accepting markings with the images of nano-barcodes.

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High-Tech and Innovations in Research and Manufacturing (HIRM-2020) IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1582 (2020) 012032 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1582/1/012032

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