Pixelated Tellurium Nanowire Assemblies for Flexible and Polarization-Driven Multimodal Anticounterfeiting

Anticounterfeiting technologies capable of enabling both visual authentication and machine-readable encryption are critically demanded. Here we present a wafer-scale and flexible tellurium nanowire (TeNW) platform with programmable localized orientation, enabling dual-mode anticounterfeiting based on polarization-encoded information. By employing a lock-shear and lift-off strategy, pixelated and highly aligned TeNW arrays with feature sizes down to 5 μm are realized on arbitrary rigid and flexible substrates, exhibiting dichroic ratios of up to 4.6 and stretchability exceeding 100%. Beyond passive optical security, the semiconducting nature of TeNWs allows these oriented arrays to function as active channels in asymmetric Schottky photodetectors, delivering broadband photoresponse (405-1064 nm), an anisotropic photocurrent ratio of 2.35, and an ultrafast response time of 430 μs under self-powered operation. Leveraging this capability, polarization-encoded information can be transduced into polarization-sensitive electrical signals, establishing a hardware-level security paradigm that physically encodes information in the material rather than in algorithms.