Laserable KINEGRAM ZERO.ZERO: Extending Security into the Portrait Area

The portrait occupies a particularly important position. ICAO identifies the standardized face portrait as a central information carrier connecting an ICAO-compliant electronic machine-readable travel document (eMRTD) to its holder, and recognizes its role in both manual and automated document inspection.

Guidance on document security explicitly recognizes fraudulent portrait substitution or alteration as highly relevant threats. For polycarbonate-based ID cards or passport data pages, ICAO recommends additional optically variable security. This includes DOVIDs as an appropriate means of raising the document’s security level.

DOVIDs are arguably the most effective feature for protecting the photographs of ID documents against counterfeiting and manipulation, and partially metallized DOVIDs are particularly appreciated by customers and users for their ease of verification and comparatively stronger protection.

However, among the most basic rules of designing DOVIDs for polycarbonate documents is that metallic elements cannot extend into the portrait area, as they would eventually be destroyed during laser personalization. They must be fully transparent in the area of the photograph so as not to risk the loss of critical portrait protection.

Laserable KINEGRAM ZERO.ZERO features address this limitation and enable the creation of partially metallized photo protection for portraits in polycarbonate documents. 

The combination of the high-precision KINERGAM ZERO.ZERO metallization technology and specialized laser personalization equipment allows for embedding partially metallized KINEGRAM elements in polycarbonate-based identity documents in such a way that the metallic structures partially overlap the portrait area.

Using special designs and a “laser personalization key”, the document holder’s portrait can be lasered without the laser removing the metallic elements of the KINEGRAM, leaving its security effects unharmed.

The resulting benefit is important from a security perspective. Manipulation of the portrait becomes substantially more difficult without also affecting the KINERGAM ZERO.ZERO elements and their optical security effects. The portrait and the DOVID therefore do not simply coexist in the same document area: they work together to provide a closely integrated layer of protection.

This creates an additional option for protecting a document area that is particularly sensitive to alteration and substitution attempts.

The underlying laserable KINEGRAM ZERO.ZERO technology was developed several years ago. Since then, continued testing and developments in personalization equipment have considerably broadened its practical applicability.

Following successful evaluation with industry-standard laser personalization providers, the solution can now be considered for a wide range of production environments and polycarbonate-based identity documents.

For project-specific questions, design considerations or compatibility requirements, we shall be glad to discuss with you how a laserable KINEGRAM ZERO.ZERO could be incorporated in your future identity document design.