Intelligent Material
Intelligent Material Solutions · Princeton, NJ

Engineered crystals that turn invisible light into information.

Already in banknotes, clothing fiber, surgical supplies and defense programs.

Authentication Medical diagnostics All applications →
Proceed ↓
Intelligent Material Solutions

Energy-converting materials that connect the physical world with the digital world.

We engineer inert rare-earth crystals to convert energy and provide measurable information.

This is not some future technology. Intelligent Material is already in your money, your clothing and your surgical supplies.
CURRENCYInvisible optical identity incorporated into banknotes.See how it works → APPAREL + FIBERSEmbedded into fibers for manufacturing control, traceability and authentication.See the fiber case → SURGICAL SUPPLIESAbout 3 billion surgical-supply units secured in 2025.See authentication →
Explore applications See the technology Enter Crystal Lab President’s Letter
From the President
“When you find a puzzle piece,
there must be a puzzle.”
Howard Bell · President, Intelligent Material Solutions · Read the letter →
One material platform

Convert energy. Provide information.

Intelligent Material is a family of inert crystals that convert energy. We engineer the crystal itself – changing composition, rare-earth ratios, size, temporal response, magnetic behavior, optical power-density response and core/shell interactions.

The result is a material that can become part of the product itself and carry a persistent, machine-readable identity from manufacture through the supply chain and into the field.

How it works
CONVERT ENERGY PROVIDE INFORMATION
In use today

Working in the field,
not just the lab.

Three markets where Intelligent Material is in use now. Everything else we are developing is on the Applications page, labeled by how far along it is.

In use

Authentication

An invisible identity inside the product: banknotes, fiber, surgical supplies, labels and packaging. Read by a reader or a phone.

→ In use

Lateral-flow diagnostics

Quantitative test strips read by a portable infrared reader, used in research programs with more than 200,000 patients tested. The base for every IMS diagnostics program, from clinics to home and pets.

→ In use

Defense

Covert marking and traceability in government programs since 2009. Biodefense assays for anthrax, ricin and radiation dose are built, and taggants were read at up to 500 m.

→

Everything else, by how far along it is: Authentication & security · Sensing & measurement · Diagnostics & medical · Water & environment · Spectroscopy · Energy · Displays, light & quantum · Transportation, education & play. We are looking for commercialization partners.

View all applications
In development · concept
A new direction

Health at home
— in development.

IMS is developing a connected home-health platform. The body already leaves samples around the house: in the bathroom, in a drop of blood at the kitchen table, and in what the dog leaves in the yard. Small cartridges catch them, an infrared reader measures the crystals, and a phone shows each trend against your own baseline.

  • Trends, not snapshots. Many quiet readings of the same person, or the same dog, so a change stands out early.
  • Almost no background glow. Urine, stool and blood are dark under infrared. Only the crystals answer.
  • The clinician decides. The system flags a change and points to a doctor or a vet.
Illustration · concept
Cutaway of a house. Samples from the smart toilet and the razor rinse in the bathroom, a finger-prick at the kitchen table and a stool cartridge from the dog travel to one infrared reader. The reader sends each result to a phone that plots four trends. BATHROOMTHE READERKITCHEN TABLETHE DOG mirror Ready Your trends
Illustration of a concept. Trend lines are invented values, not data. Breath at the mirror goes to a separate mid-infrared analyzer, not this reader.
Concept

Smart Bathroom

The toilet, the analytical razor and the mirror read what the body already leaves: urine, stool, razor residue, breath and skin. A version for ships puts a sensor in every head.

See the Smart Bathroom → Assay publishedHome platform: concept

Home drug monitoring

A two-minute finger-prick test: is the medicine being taken, how much is in the body, and is a reaction starting? In a published Leiden study of 30 patients, finger-prick drug levels closely tracked serum.

See drug monitoring → Concept

The same idea for the dog

A six-strip stool cartridge for parvovirus, giardia, hookworm, roundworm, gut inflammation and digestion. Weekly readings learn each dog’s normal and go to the vet.

See the canine gut panel →

Honest status: in development and concept. None of this is a medical device or a cleared test. We are looking for partners: fixture makers, diagnostics and pharma companies, clinical researchers and veterinary groups.

Talk to us about home health
The platform

Program the crystal. Program the response.

The same fundamental material can be engineered for different wavelengths, lifetimes, excitation intensities, magnetic properties and physical environments.

That is why Intelligent Material can support both energy conversion and information encoding - and why the same platform can appear in applications that seem completely unrelated.

Explore the technology
CompositionWhich rare-earth elements go into the crystal, and in what ratios, sets the colors it can absorb and emit. Change the recipe and you change the spectral fingerprint.Learn in Crystal School → StructureThe host crystal lattice, particle size and shape control how efficiently energy moves through the material and how it behaves inside inks, fibers, coatings and fluids.Learn in Crystal School → TimeEvery emission rises and fades at its own rate. Lifetime and decay add a time signature on top of color, a second layer of identity that is very hard to copy.Learn in Crystal School → ExcitationWhich wavelength switches the crystal on, and how strongly (optical power density), changes what it emits. One material can answer differently to different lasers or intensities.Learn in Crystal School → MagneticsMagnetic rare-earth ions let a particle be moved, concentrated or separated with a magnet, and can create magneto-optical effects, where a magnetic field changes the optical signal itself.Learn in Crystal School → Core / shellLayering one crystal around another lets each shell do its own job: isolating, boosting or deliberately coupling energy between layers to build more complex responses.Learn in Crystal School →
Under the microscope

Every crystal the same. Published, peer-reviewed, patented.

Our crystals are so uniform in size and shape that, left on their own, they tile together like floor tiles. That uniformity is what makes each optical signature sharp and repeatable. The method was developed with Professor Christopher Murray's group at the University of Pennsylvania and published in PNAS and Nature Chemistry, with IMS scientist Joshua E. Collins as co-author.

Electron microscope image of IMS rare-earth crystals: uniform hexagonal plates and rodsIMS CRYSTALS · ELECTRON MICROSCOPE
Grown to one size and shapeHexagonal plates and rods from an IMS synthesis. Uniform particles give every spot on a product the same optical answer.
ILLUSTRATION · DRAWN BY IMS
One recipe, four shapesPNAS 2010: changing only reaction time and the sodium ratio turned spheres into rods, prisms and flat plates.
ILLUSTRATION · DRAWN BY IMS
Under 4% size spreadThe hexagonal plates measured 133 ± 5 nm edge to edge, uniform enough to assemble into ordered domains on their own.
ILLUSTRATION · DRAWN BY IMS
Shape plus sticky edges set the patternNature Chemistry 2013: the surface coating binds one kind of edge about six times more strongly than another (0.70 vs 0.12 eV). Simulations predicted the alternating pattern the lab observed.
PNAS · 2010Morphologically controlled synthesis of colloidal upconversion nanophosphors and their shape-directed self-assemblyX. Ye, J. E. Collins (IMS), Y. Kang, J. Chen, D. T. N. Chen, A. G. Yodh, C. B. Murray. PNAS 107, 22430–22435. The uniform-crystal method behind Intelligent Material. Read the paper ↗ Nature Chemistry · 2013Competition of shape and interaction patchiness for self-assembling nanoplatesX. Ye, J. Chen, M. Engel, A. J. Millan, W. Li, L. Qi, G. Xing, J. E. Collins (IMS), C. R. Kagan, J. Li, S. C. Glotzer, C. B. Murray. Nature Chemistry 5, 466–473. Read the paper ↗ PatentsUS 9,181,477 · US 10,273,407 and moreUniform, monodisperse rare-earth crystals and the methods that read them. See the full science story →

Electron micrograph: Intelligent Material Solutions. Illustrations drawn by IMS from the published findings. See our lab data → · All publications →

News

Recent milestones.

20253 billion surgical-supply units securedIntelligent Material, supplied by NovaVera, secured about 3 billion surgical-supply units in 2025, alongside banknotes and fiber.
IMS

Inventor of Intelligent Material.

Intelligent Material Solutions invented Intelligent Material. We develop the crystals, the methods that read them and the intellectual property that protects both.

About IMS
Manufacturing & sales

NovaVera Corporation

NovaVera Corp. is the commercialization arm. Under an exclusive license from IMS, which holds all of the intellectual property, it makes and sells Intelligent Material for authentication, diagnostics and other markets.

Visit NovaVera
Intelligent Material Solutions, Inc. · Princeton, New JerseyEnergy-converting materials. Measurable information.