Femtosecond-Laser-Induced Physical Unclonable Random Maze Structure for Storage-Free Encryption

Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) serve as physical cryptographic primitives that provide hardware-level information protection. However, as PUFs shrink to smaller and more complex dimensions, they face increasing challenges in response accessibility and storage overhead. Here, we present a multi-level, easily accessible PUFs based on gold random maze structures that enable information encryption without storing responses or keys. The mazes are formed through femtosecond-laser-induced localized plasmonic effects and Marangoni convection on gold near-percolation films. The random morphologies support independent optical and electrical PUFs based on Au mazes. The microscale interconnects endowed with nanoscale structural characteristics allow on-site acquisition of PUF responses and real-time key generation during encryption with high security. We further demonstrate a high-security and storage-free encryption process on an integrated circuit platform, highlighting a path to shift from long-term key storage models to next-generation, on-site security architectures.