Scalable Photo-Responsive Physical Unclonable Functions via Particle Kinetics.

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Nanotechnology
• Physical Chemistry

Background:

• Counterfeiting and information theft pose significant threats to micro- and nanoelectronic security.
• Current anticounterfeiting and cryptographic methods face scalability limitations due to reliance on physical phenomena variability.
• There is a critical need for scalable security platforms for micro- and nanoelectronics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a scalable platform for photoresponsive physically unclonable functions (PUFs).
• To create robust and compact security systems for anticounterfeiting and cryptographic applications.
• To demonstrate the resilience of these PUFs against machine-learning attacks.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing oxide particle kinetics in polymer solutions to create random patterns.
• Employing stochastic agglomeration during polymer film formation for micro- to nanoscale pixel generation.
• Developing both optical PUFs on flexible polymer films and electrical PUFs using UV ozone treatment with aggregate masks.

Main Results:

• Achieved scalable pixel sizes from micro to nanoscales.
• Produced mechanically flexible and self-destructible optical PUF patterns.
• Generated electrical PUF patterns with high resilience against machine-learning attacks (∼50% prediction error).

Conclusions:

• The developed scalable platforms offer a hardware solution for robust cryptographic applications.
• The photoresponsive PUFs provide a novel approach to anticounterfeiting and data security.
• The technology demonstrates significant potential for securing micro- and nanoelectronic devices.