Product and packaging counterfeiting is big business for the bad guys and detrimental to brands and consumers. Today’s manufacturers are continually on the hunt for ways to label their products in such a way that protects their reputation and brands and saving countless money in lost revenue.

Packaging and surface design is a growing option for counterfeit protection, and in particular the surface design in the micro or nanometer range, that delivers a number of protections and advantages. One example of this currently being deployed, uses nano-structured signatures. These tiny colored markings are applied in a printing process and cannot be physically copied.

Most of the applied packaging protection methods all require the analysis of surfaces. Quantitatively evaluating measurements of structures on tools and printing rollers, distance, step height, angle, roughness, contour, layer thickness and topography of surfaces can be analyzed. This provides the precise height data for 3D measurements and can be set for several production plants, guaranteeing counterfeit protection.

This is where tactile methods reach their limits during a certain run. Designed as a one-button solution, these tools prevent employees from influencing the measurement result. In addition, a manufacturer is able to vary possible control points during production and thus keep them secret.

FormFactor’s  FRT metrology multi-sensor measuring tools have a modular setup that allows them to be easily adapted to various applications on site. For the measurement of topography, roughness, sample thickness, layer thickness and many other surface parameters, the FRT surface measuring systems can be equipped with various sensors. FormFactor’s FRT tools offer a wide range of point, area and film thickness sensors and even an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), which are fully integrated into the tool and can be flexibly arranged and combined. The possibility of retrofitting sensors opens up further options for flexible adaptation to future measuring tasks, such as individual and exchangeable sample holders.

For additional information, check out FormFactor’s FRT Packaging Applications.