Putting Ink into Polyion Micelles: Full-Color Anticounterfeiting with Water/Organic Solvent Dual Resistance

Anticounterfeiting paintings are usually with limited colors and easy blurring and need to be dispersed in an environmentally unfriendly organic solvent. We report a set of water-based polyion micellar inks to solve all these problems. Upon complexation of reversible coordination polymers formed with rare earth metal ions Eu3+ and Tb3+ and the aggregation-induced emission ligand tetraphenylethylene-L2EO4 with oppositely charged block polyelectrolyte P2MVP29-b-PEO205, we are able to generate polyion micelles displaying three elementary emission colors of red (R) (ΦEu3+ = 24%), green (G) (ΦTb3+ = 7%), and blue (B) (ΦTPE = 9%). Full-spectrum emission and white light emission (0.34, 0.34) become possible by simply mixing the R, G, and B micelles at the desired fraction. Strikingly, the micellar inks remain stable even after soaking in water or organic solvents (ethyl acetate, ethanol, etc.) for 24 h. We envision that polyion micelles would open a new paradigm in the field of anticounterfeiting.