Inkjet-printed h-BN memristors for hardware security.

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology
• Electronics Engineering

Background:

• The inkjet printing electronics market is rapidly expanding, with significant growth projected.
• Two-dimensional (2D) materials offer potential to enhance existing electronic devices and enable novel applications.
• Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is an insulating 2D material with unique properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an easy and affordable method for synthesizing h-BN inks for inkjet printing.
• To fabricate memristors using these h-BN inks.
• To investigate the stochastic phenomena exhibited by the fabricated memristors for potential applications in data encryption.

Main Methods:

• Liquid-phase exfoliation to synthesize multilayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) inks.
• Inkjet printing to deposit h-BN inks and fabricate memristor devices.
• Characterization of memristor devices for stochastic phenomena, including resistance variability and noise.

Main Results:

• Successfully synthesized h-BN inks via a cost-effective liquid-phase exfoliation process.
• Fabricated memristors exhibiting multiple stochastic phenomena: variable resistance, volatile unipolar and non-volatile bipolar resistive switching with high variability, and random telegraph noise (RTN).
• Attributed stochastic behavior to the inherent unpredictability of inkjet printing, such as thickness variations and random flake orientations.

Conclusions:

• The developed h-BN memristors are easy to fabricate, inexpensive, and possess desirable stochastic properties for entropy sources in electronic circuits.
• These memristors are suitable for information encryption in diverse objects and products.
• The inkjet printing versatility makes these devices particularly attractive for flexible and wearable applications in the Internet of Things (IoT).