The PicoMaster-H and PicoMaster XF-H direct laser writers of Raith Laser Systems (formerly 4PICO BV) have a pedigree going back to the days of CD and DVD mastering. Today, the company’s mastering systems are used to make holograms, and other optically variable devices, for the document security, brand authentication, luxury packaging, and product embellishment industries.

As I step down as the editor of this publication, I’m looking back on our journey over the past three years. In September 2020, I introduced myself as the incoming editor, and now, as time completes its circle, I’m passing the baton to the next editor of Holography News® (HN).

Since it was first published in 1987, Holography News® has charted the course of holography’s progress, from a laboratory-based optical technique for recording, storing, and replaying wavefronts, to a term that means a whole lot more. While still being a technology in its own right, it has worked its way into the public consciousness as an auxiliary technology in a whole raft of new applications.

The Hologram Image Register (HIR), established by the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) to help safeguard hologram copyright and underpin the use of holograms in authentication and security printing, has been extended and relaunched as the Security Image Register (SIR).

The International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) awards have put sustainability and innovation at the heart of global holographic growth and success.

Walton Institute, based at the South East Technological University (SETU) in Waterford, Ireland, has been chosen as one of the recipients of the €16.5 million 2023 Capital Equipment Fund administered by Enterprise Ireland through the Technology Gateway and Technology Centre Programmes.

In this article, Dr Mark Deakes from ITW Speciality Films, part of the US- headquartered ITW Group, gives some insights into the crucial role holography plays in securing government ID documents.

The 30th in the series of The Holography Conference™ (THC), held online on 21-22 November, was opened by Astrid Mitchell, Reconnaissance International, who welcomed the audience and thanked conference partners, the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA), as well as sponsors XRD nano and Raith Laser Systems, for their continuing support.

Enforcing alcohol and tobacco duty payments using tax stamps is a major source of revenue for governments across the world. The process to make the stamps can often be time consuming and limited to printing firms with specialist equipment. But that could be about to change!

Even as research into improving the performance of holographic displays continues, display hardware company Illumetry, has recently unveiled its ‘Illumetry EOS’ device – the company’s newest product in its line- up of holographic displays built on its ‘MotionParallax3D’ principle.

In the Spring of 2023, Oberthur Fiduciaire took out a majority stake in Rolling Optics, which was founded in 2005 with solid technical research at the Ångström Laboratory at Uppsala University, Sweden.

The Royal Institution in London is considered to be one of the oldest scientific societies in the world. Over the last two centuries, the building and labs have been home to ground-breaking science engagement, including the world-famous Christmas Lectures1. But for two days at the end of October it housed a demonstration of Musion3D’s heightened reality display – often referred to as holopresence.

In the August Holography News® (HN) edition of ‘Then and Now’, I highlighted the role that holograms have played in protecting banknotes from counterfeiting. Looking through the archives of HN I note that at about the same time as the first hologram on a banknote was reported there was an article titled ‘Upper Deck Hits Home Run with Holography’ which told one of the many stories about applications of holograms on trading cards – a phenomenon that took the US by storm in the late 1980s early 90s.

In this occasional series of company profiles of members of the International Hologram Manufactures Association (IHMA), we take a look at Zhongchao Special Security Technology Co Ltd (ZSST) and the technologies it has to offer.

For more than 10 years, Holyoke, Massachusetts-based Hazen Paper has worked on the Enshrinement yearbook cover for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In this, the 11th Enshrinement yearbook, Hazen uses their HoloJet® paper to project an amplified refractive three-dimensional image of a basketball symbolizing the Hall of Fame dome.

Another artist to be added to the increasingly long list of deceased performers to be immortalised in holographic form is the late Malaysian singer Sudirman Arshad, or Sudirman as he’s more commonly known.

In this occasional series, we round up the recent new issues of banknotes containing a hologram or other optically variable device.

As IQ Structures, a member of the IQS Group, expands its capacity to protect over 1 billion documents a year, it is looking at ways to simplify the job of the document inspector and frustrate the work of the counterfeiter.

Demax Holograms was one of the first manufacturers of security holograms in eastern Europe and now sells its products to over 70 different countries. It has been a full member of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) since 1996 and took the opportunity to present its latest nano-optical elements for physical security at the recent Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum in Tbilisi, Georgia (2-4 October 2023).

Over the course of the past four years, four currency series in the Caribbean have converted to polymer – starting with the East Caribbean dollar in 2019, followed by Trinidad & Tobago in 2020, then Barbados in 2022 and, most recently, Jamaica this summer. With the exception of the Trinidad & Tobago series, they all feature holograms on the higher denominations.

Holography, and other optical security devices, have become a mainstay of document design when it comes to protecting the photo and personally identifiable information on ID cards, passports, visa stickers and other documents for authenticating a person.

Holographic displays project 3D images that appear to float in space, without needing special glasses to view. This makes them useful for applications like education, entertainment, and medicine, but current holographic displays suffer from limitations in viewing angle, image sharpness and depth of field.

De La Rue has announced that its Authentication division is on track to exceed £100 million in revenue for fiscal year 2024, demonstrating good growth versus 2023 results, and making it the fastest growing division in the company.

Reconnaissance International is pleased to announce the release of its new one-of-a kind publication – ‘Smartphones for Authentication’

At a time when pop stars, sports personalities and politicians are queuing up to have their likenesses enshrined as a hologram for posterity, new research asks whether audiences can really interact with the performer when, in reality, they are not present.

The programme has now been published for the Holography Conference 2023, taking place 21-22 November, the only global conference for the commercial holography industry, tracking every new development in holography since 1990.

Krriyan Kontainers, previously known as Darshan Flexibles, is expanding its operations into holographic solutions for the packaging industry in India.

Groove Jones is a Texas-based technology company that produces augmented and virtual reality interactive applications and digital experiences. It has used holographic techniques to great effect in some of its work and has now produced a useful primer: ‘Holograms 101 and Their Use in Today’s Marketing’.

After last month’s coverage in Holography News® of how holograms were helping to create a safer marketplace for Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) certified coins, another coin protection programme using holograms has emerged from PCGS.

In the 2014 Hollywood movie RoboCop, a detective becomes critically injured and is turned into a cyborg police officer whose programming blurs the line between man and machine. In his on-line opinion piece on the ‘Police1’ platform , Commander Jason Grossini looks to holographic, rather than robotic, police officers to keep the peace.

Researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have invented an augmented reality headset that uses holographic principles to allow humans to ‘see’ through opaque surfaces. The invention, dubbed ‘X-AR’, combines wireless sensing with computer vision and a floating holographic sphere to enable users to see hidden items.

In Meta Materials Inc’s recent webinar ‘Producing the World’s First Fully Plasmonic 3D Animated Banknote Security Feature’, Vice President, Technology and Innovation Clint Landrock explained the motivation behind Meta’s KolourOptik® Stripe and its toolkit of customisable authentication effects with 3D parallax (see HN May 2023).

The Reserve Bank of Fiji has released a commemorative banknote to celebrate the Chinese Lunar Year of the Dragon. The date of issue – the eighth day of the eighth month – is an auspicious one, the number 8 being the luckiest in Chinese culture, symbolising wealth and good fortune.

eeNews reports that holographic projection startup Swave Photonics NV (Leuven, Belgium) has raised an additional €3 million in seed funding, taking the amount raised by the company to €10 million.

Revenue authorities, experts and solution providers from around the world have confirmed their speaking slot at the Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum™, taking place in Tbilisi, Georgia from 2-4 October 2023.

KURZ, the leading supplier of security foils with diffractive features, has produced a new reference book with a wide selection of images of banknotes that have utilised its KINEGRAM® technology.

The Holography Conference™ is the only global forum for the commercial holography industry – and has tracked every new development in holography since 1990.

Following up on the announcement at the end of last year (see HN November 2022) of the plan to relocate the HoloCenter to the Hudson Valley, we can now report that the HoloCenter is reopening in Kingston, NY, under the guidance of Executive Director, Linda Law.

Ever since surface relief replication became the preferred means of mass production for holography, hot-stamping foil has been a principal method of application – particularly for packaging and secure documents. The machines used to apply holograms at speed and in register are an integral part of the job’s final appearance. Swiss machinery manufacturer, BOBST, has been involved in providing hot-stamp presses to the holography industry for many years, and continues to innovate to this day.

In June 2023’s edition of the International Hologram Manufacturers’ Association (IHMA) patent newsletter, just under 100 patents are listed; among them are two patents from the Korea Electronics Technology Institute.

IN Groupe, owners of the optical features specialist SURYS, has agreed to buy 100% of the shares of Gleitsmann Security Inks from hubergroup Deutschland for an undisclosed consideration in cash.

The 12th International Symposium on Display Holography (ISDH) took place in Seoul, South Korea, from 26 June to 1 July. This was five years after the previous Symposium, breaking the three-year cycle, for obvious reasons to do with COVID and travel restrictions.

Holograms have a long and successful history as a decorative enhancement on coins (see HN November 2022), where, for example, a holographic relief structure is embossed into a resin that coats one side of the coin. But another range of coin applications for holography comes in the shape of security labels that demonstrate the authenticity of the coin.

A few years ago, Australia based Euclideon Holographics made the news with the production of its multi-user hologram table, which allowed four people to interact simultaneously with images apparently projected onto a table surface (see HN September 2021). Since then the company has changed its name (to Axiom Holographics) and added new applications to its product offerings.

Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of the Mona Lisa is one of the most readily recognisable works in western art. A group of research institutes have now collaborated to develop an acoustic metasurface-based holography technique that uses a deep learning algorithm to generate and iteratively improve a hologram of the portrait.

In the inaugural column of ‘Then and Now’ in June’s edition of Holography News®, which looked at the birth of automotive production model heads-up displays, I dropped in a tantalising snippet from the May 1988 edition of HN that chronicled the beginning of what has since become the single largest commercial application for holography of all time.

It used to be that poor lighting was the major cause of disappointment when it came to viewing holograms. But as the definition of holography has been stretched to include heightened reality displays, so have the number of reasons to be disappointed.

Miirage is a new holographic system that brings people, objects and scenes to ‘life’ without the need for external wearables.

In this excerpt from July’s ‘Authentication Insights ’ - renowned security hologram producer, De La Rue, asks what can micro-optics learn from holographics?

A rare Pokémon holographic card, that could sell for thousands of dollars, will be open for bids this month at Hansons Auctioneers (UK). The holographic Charizard trading card will be part of a collection up for auction in the auction house's specialist toy and trading cards event in July.

On 13 June 2023, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (EU) provisionally agreed on rules to digitise the Schengen visa procedure.

Holographic displays allow the projection of apparently 3D images in space without the need for special eyewear. They can use a variety of optical methods to create the illusion of solidity and depth, allowing viewers to perceive objects or scenes as if they were real and existing in the physical space before them.

The government of the Australian island state of Tasmania is planning to make car number plates more secure with the decision to incorporate new holographic markings into their design.

The recent HSP (High Security Printing™) Latin America conference in Nassau, the Bahamas gave holographic foil manufacturer Hueck Folien the perfect platform to showcase its portfolio of stripes and threads for banknotes.

In May 2023’s edition of the International Hologram Manufacturers’ Association (IHMA) patent newsletter more than 100 patents are listed, among them two from semiconductor wafer processing equipment manufacturer, AMS International, in the Holographic Displays section of the newsletter.

The history of holographic research and practice at De Montfort University (DMU) Leicester, UK goes back many years to before the days of Profs Nick Philips and Hans Bjelkhagen, and more recently to Prof Martin Richardson’s activities in colour holography. We can now add to that list the name of Prof Christine White (Deputy Dean, Faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities), who has taken over the direction of the Holography Lab at DMU.

The Holography Conference is the only global conference for the commercial holography industry – and has tracked every new development in holography since 1990.

In 2021, as Costa Rica reached the 200-year anniversary of independence from Spain and at a time when countries around the world were struggling with the effects of COVID, the country took the bold move to upgrade its travel document from machine-readable passport (MRP) to a fully compliant biometric passport, which was a joint winner of the 2023 Regional ID Document of the Year award at the HSP Latin America conference in the Bahamas.

IN Groupe, global specialist in identities and digital services and owner of SURYS, has announced that it has signed an agreement with UK-based Portals for the sale of papermaker Portals’ security components business in Bollate, Italy.

A new holographic projector system will allow autonomous cars to communicate with pedestrians and cyclists without the need for hand signals from a human driver, according to its creators.

Reconnaissance International has embarked on a major exercise to archive the back catalogue of Holography News®. The task, which is nearing completion, was to add digitised versions of the paper publications for the years 1987-2003 (for which we are indebted to Prof Hans Bjelkhagen for the loan of his library of HN newsletters) to the existing digital versions of later years that had been collated by former editor, Ian Lancaster.

Holography has a long history as a teaching tool, from the early use as interactive 3D representations of skulls, dental molds and religious relics to the current trend of integration into mixed reality to enhance the teaching and learning process. In this article, we take a look at the evolving role of the technology in teaching and, conversely, at how educators teach students about the technology.

The African Currency Forum (ACF), held in Luxor, Egypt in January, gave the host country a chance to showcase its new Printing House and Cash Centre, and the National Company for Advanced Industries and Integrated Strategic Printing Solutions (NASPS). NASPS has already set up full service holographic production facilities, which has to be said went largely unseen and unreported by Holography News® – so we decided to investigate a bit further and find out more.

The International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) has commented on the European Commission’s ‘Report on the Protection and Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in Third Countries’, saying that it opens opportunities for anti-counterfeiting security devices such as holograms in developing countries.

In April 2023’s edition of the International Hologram Manufacturers’ Association (IHMA) patent newsletter more than 80 patents are listed, among them a method for anti-counterfeiting printed material from the National Printing Bureau (Japan).

A team of scientists and engineers led by Federico Capasso, Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has reported in Nature Photonics a new way of creating holograms using threads of light layered to construct 2D sheets containing tightly controlled arrays of light. These sheets can then be tightly stacked –like a pile of cheese slices – to depict 3D objects.

In December 2021, Holography News® reported that Silicon Valley startup company, Light Field Lab, was accepting advanced orders for its holographic display platform, dubbed SolidLight. Now that SolidLight is in production. we can follow up on the progress the company has made.

After the success of THCO 2022, and the successful run of over 30 uninterrupted years, Reconnaissance International invites you to join with the rest of the holography community on 21-22 November for THCO 2023.

In this, the first major redesign of the country’s travel document for over two decades, the Casa da Moeda do Brasil used holograms and optically variable inks (OVIs) to help secure the document – and a prestigious international award.

Meta Materials Inc. (previously Nanotech Security Corp) has been a pioneer in banknote OVD (Optically Variable Device) technology for the past decade with innovations in micro-, nano- and now plasmonic structures. The company has also developed in-house secure foil production so that it can offer banknote stripes direct to customers.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Tianjin University have come up with a new light-field sensor which, they say, can create 3D images with an angular resolution as fine as 0.0018° — and can even extend into X-ray frequencies.

A membership organisation on the scale of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA), representing most of the world’s leading hologram companies, needs the backing of an active secretariat to deliver its range of member services, support its planned expansion and forge new industry collaborations.

Structural colours, surfaces structured to control the interference of light, featured strongly in the ‘New Optical Techniques for Security’ section of ODDS 2023, Prague (17–19 April).

As editor of Holography News®, I have followed, with some admiration, the activities of renowned Czech Republic optical innovators IQ Structures. So, as I made my plans to attend the ODDS Conference in Prague it made sense that I should try and visit their facilities to find out more about the company.

Back in September 2021, Holography News® reported that printing had started of the newly designed 10,000 yen note which contained an intriguing moving portrait of Eiichi Shibusawa. Now, for the first time, The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has displayed the series of three new banknotes, and all of them contain a holographic portrait.

After its use as a means of holoporting actors, singers and sports people to remote venues, the Proto Epic is now being trialled to deliver witness testimonies.

OpSec has announced that it will list on the NASDAQ stock exchange by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) –Investcorp Europe Acquisition Corp I. The SPAC is an arm of OpSec’s current owners – the private equity firm Investcorp Technology Partners.

Holopresence video calls are becoming a vital lynchpin in the growing remote work environment. To develop this business tool even further, Google has been working on Project Starline, a line of video call booths that presents the participants as realistic 3D holograms.

The service and hospitality industry is struggling to overcome the bottleneck of staff shortages that has severely limited its bounce back from COVID restrictions. One innovative hotel operator, BWH Hotel Group, is planning to use holographic technology to lend a hand.

PxE Holographic Imaging, which develops holographic imaging cameras, has secured $5.4 million seed funding led by KDT – Koch Disruptive Technologies (the technology investment arm of Koch Industries) – and M Ventures, the venture investment arm of the science and technology company Merck KGaA.

ChatGPT is an artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022. It’s come under some negative scrutiny recently and is currently banned in Italy pending a data protection investigation.

Almost a year to the day since the inaugural Optical & Digital Document Security™ (ODDS) Conference in Vienna (Austria), 172 delegates from 94 global organisations along with representatives from government, research institutes and academia gathered (17-19 April) in Prague – the Czech Republic’s stunning capital city – to share recent technical developments in the fields of optical and digital document security.

Established in 1993, the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) has evolved into a global voice on authentication and security devices. Now, five former chairs – and one general secretary – reflect on 30 years of holography growth while offering a glimpse of an exciting future for the technology.

The work of most holographers involves recording or calculating the light reflected from a reflective/absorbent surface or from the internal volume contained within a partially transmissive surface.

Investment funds continue to flow into the diffractive optics sector. And as the following examples show, it isn’t necessarily into the usual suspects of document security, brand protection or packaging decoration.

Idvac Ltd, UK, a specialist in advanced vacuum and thin film technology, has been investigating the properties of its recent development of white metallised coating with high reflection.

The International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 28 February. Those present included current Chairman Paul Dunn, newly appointed General Secretary Micaal Sidorov, Board Members Corinne Murcia (SURYS), Mark Deakes (De La Rue) and Ondrej Fedorchak (Optaglio) as well as representatives from Process Color, OpSec Security, Authentication Solutions Providers Association (ASPA), Centro Grafico, Computer Holography Centre, Papierfabrik Louisenthal and ITW Imagenta.

Holoxica, one of the pioneers of commercial light field display technologies, has entered liquidation due to cashflow challenges – with bosses saying it could not continue without significant investment even though its tech had attracted international interest.

Posy Jackson (as everyone knew her) was an extraordinary human being with a huge heart and a supremely generous soul.

IQ Structures, a research and manufacturing organisation focused on nanotechnology engineering and based out of a nuclear reactor site in Řež near Prague, has launched IQ Mint, a technology solution for anti-counterfeit protection and the visual enhancement of precious metal objects such as coins, medals and investment bars.

The particle theory of matter sits at the centre of the scientific methodology. Objects that appear uniform, solid and homogeneous at the everyday macroscopic scale are, when you investigate them with sufficient resolution and detail, in fact made up of particles (atoms, molecules and compounds) that are not the same entity as the object they form.

Mobile World Conference (MWC) Barcelona 2023 (27 February to 2 March) saw a whole range of mobile comms use cases – including a 3D holographic telepresence system from Telefónica.

Holographic textiles are often used in fashion and design to add a futuristic and eye-catching element to clothing, but an article in The Cornell Chronicle (produced by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York) explains how holographic effects are being used to dress a satellite.

The prestigious Regional Banknote and ID Document of the Year Awards form part of the industry’s High Security Printing™ EMEA conference. This year’s event was held on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, with the awards presented at a special ceremony in the stunning grounds of the W Hotel, during the conference dinner on 8 March 2023.

Commercial holograms will maintain robust growth in 2023 despite the global challenges, says Dr Paul Dunn, chair of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA).

It shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone who has seen Disney movies or visited any of their theme parks that the corporation takes holograms – both physical and digital – very seriously. The love affair between Disney and holograms goes back more than 40 years and shows no sign of breaking up.

The stakes are high in the race for lightweight, energy efficient waveguides for smart glasses. In this article adapted from ZDNet, Israeli augmented reality optics company Lumus explains why it believes its range of reflective 2D waveguide technology beats the diffractive competition.

The Gupta brothers, Shobhit and Ankit, are Joint Managing Directors of the Holostik Group – a diversified business conglomerate in sectors including chemicals, biodegradable products, real-estate, warehousing, and digital technology.

1 February, 2023 was a special day and a milestone in the history of LEONHARD KURZ – a pioneer in the mass commercialisation of holography for both security and decorative applications.

In December 2022’s edition of the IHMA patent newsletter more than 85 patents are listed, among them a method from Chungnam National University Industry Academic Foundation. This includes a security element comprising a liquid crystal reference of nematic phase and a liquid crystal in which the orientation is patterned.

After the success of The 2022 Holography Conference Online (THCO), and the successful run of over 30 uninterrupted years, Reconnaissance International invites you to join with the rest of the holography community on 21-22 November for THCO 2023.

IQ Structures, a research and production organisation focused on nanotechnology engineering, part of the IQS Group, has introduced holograms that can be authenticated automatically. All it takes is a normal light and a mobile phone app.

Based in Stafford, and distributed through a US facility, Hololollies are lollipop candies made with hologram technology. Each Holololly candy is laser etched with stars, skulls or other images creating an illusion that seems to leap out at the viewer. The lollies are safe to eat, with no dyes, colourings, or additives in the holograms.

The programme for the second Optical and Digital Document Security (ODDS) conference is now available, demonstrating the importance of this event in bringing together people involved in developing digital systems for identity and financial transactions with the more traditional security document community. The conference will be on 17-19 April 2023 in Prague, Czech Republic.

In November 2022’s edition of the IHMA patent newsletter more than 100 patents are listed, including Japan telecoms service provider KDDI’s patent titled ‘Computer Composite Hologram generation apparatus, method and programme’.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have built a formidable reputation for developing physical holographic origination techniques.

CES® is justifiably referred to as the most influential technology event in the world — the proving ground for breakthrough technologies and global innovators. This year, CES 2023 was hosted at its usual venue of the Las Vegas Convention Center, running at full capacity for the first time since before the pandemic.

The International Symposium on Display Holography (ISDH) was postponed due to COVID-19 but, as Philippe Gentet of the Hologram Forum announced at the Holography Conference Online last month, the 12th ISDN is now scheduled to take place at the Ambassador Seoul, Korea, from 26 June to 1 July 2023.

As is the tradition, the winners of the Excellence in Holography 2022 Awards were judged by Board members of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) and presented as part of The Holography Conference Online.

Chinese scientists have developed a powerful laser that could be the key to cutting-edge hologram technology, as reported by Interesting Engineering. The laser pen can write in the air to produce patterns.

If the industry needed further evidence that holographic technology is in a strong and healthy condition, it need look no further than the range and quality of nominations for the ‘Excellence in Holography 2022 Awards’, which were presented at The Holography Conference Online in December 2022.

The process of holographic mastering can be a combination of art and science, which makes it interesting to explore the thinking behind the subject matter chosen by the originator.

Centro Grafico DG was founded in 1970 and since then has established a reputation for quality and reliability in commercial holography.