Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) offer a promising defensive measure against the escalating challenges posed by the increasingly rampant counterfeit products. Conventional PUF materials with a singular physical property encounter limitations in encoding flexibility and capacity. Here, we propose a dual-color center diamond-based PUF (D-PUF) ink that exploits four diverse optical characteristics of dual-color center in diamond to design a concealable multi-level cryptographic authentication protocol. Through simple writing, stamping, or spraying, intricate covert random patterns can be directly generated on the objects, which are imperceptible under visible light. When challenged by a 532 nm laser, the D-PUF exhibits four distinct optical responses, including Raman, zero phonon line (ZPL) of germanium vacancies (GeV), ZPL of silicon vacancies (SiV), and the intensity ratios of these ZPLs. These responses were harvested simultaneously to construct the four-level separate encodable matrices. Furthermore, M-ary encoding algorithms were implemented to encrypt PUFs with flexibility. The resulting multi-level PUF system attains notable uniqueness, repeatability, extensive encoding capacity (> 1048164/(100 pixels)2), and ultra-high information entropy (6 bits/pixel). This study inspires designing new generations of multi-level PUFs with enhanced coding flexibility and holds significant promise for applications in print security.
Source: Nano Research
Authors: Fuhang Jiao, Junlu Sun, Chaonan Lin, Ying Xiao, Zhenfeng Zhang, Yuan Deng, Haizhong Guo, Shunfang Li, Lijun Wang, Chong-Xin Shan, Lin Dong
Language: English
Subfield: Hardware and Architecture
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $5,290
OpenAlex ID: W7077057967