Edible microlasers for monitoring authenticity and quality of food and pharmaceuticals

TL;DR

This paper introduces edible microlasers made from natural substances like olive oil and chlorophyll, which can be embedded into food and pharmaceuticals for sensitive, safe, and environmentally friendly monitoring of quality, authenticity, and environmental factors.

Contribution

It presents the development of entirely edible microlasers capable of encoding data and sensing environmental parameters, a novel approach for product monitoring and traceability.

Findings

Olive oil can be used as a laser medium due to its chlorophyll content.

Edible lasers can detect sugar, pH, bacteria, and temperature changes.

They can encode multiple data bits for product information.

Abstract

Traceability, security and freshness monitoring are crucial to the food and pharmaceutical industries. Currently, barcodes and sensors are almost exclusively located on product packaging. Making them edible and introducing them into edible products could significantly enhance their functions. Here, several types of microlasers made entirely out of edible substances were developed. It is striking that olive oil already contains enough chlorophyll to be used as a laser when dispersed in water as droplets. The edible lasers can be embedded directly into edible products and serve as barcodes and sensors. Due to their much narrower spectral lines compared to fluorescent or color-changing sensors, they are significantly more sensitive to various environmental factors. The edible lasers were employed to sense sugar concentration, pH, the presence of bacteria, and exposure to too-high temperatures. They can also encode tens of data bits, such as manufacturer's information and expiration date. The microlasers are entirely safe for consumption, do not change the appearance and taste of food considerably, and are environmentally friendly. The developed barcodes and sensors could also be applied to non-edible items, such as cosmetic and agricultural products, for environmental monitoring and biomedical applications.