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ActívaTM Actíva™ is an invisible, machine-readable marking and encoding technology for tracking and identifying printed materials, parts and merchandise for products as diverse as pharmaceutical labels and roll film. This revolutionary technology, which utilizes Spectra Systems' proprietary chemical and optical materials, was created in response to the need for invisibly bar coding flat mail throughout postal services worldwide. Previous attempts to solve this problem relied on UV and IR fluorescent inks to create a light emissive dataform or bar code with a high signal-to-noise ratio for easy machine detection and readout. Unfortunately this approach, though successful in a controlled laboratory setting, had not led to a practical solution for the industrial environment. A significant drawback to these approaches is that they typically require a uniform background color in order to avoid background interference with the emitted fluorescence. Varying background color and contrast, such as those created by graphics and printed text, causes absorption and reflection that severely degrades the machine detectability of the invisible bar code. An attractive solution to this problem is provided by Actíva™. A label, substrate or applied coating underneath the barcode remains transparent until activated by a Spectra stimulus device. A uniform white background is then formed that effectively blocks all background printing and the invisible bar code shifts to a high contrast visible code for easy, high accuracy reading. 
The original background colors and information make the invisible barcode, alone, unreadable. 
With Actíva Label™, a stimulus causes the label undercoat to become white. 
The same stimulus causes the invisible (over-printed) barcode to become black and readable. Download Activa™ Sell Sheet (PDF) For more information about Spectra's Products, Licensing or Joint Product Development opportunities, please contact us at:
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