Nanoseed-based physically unclonable function for on-demand encryption.

A physically unclonable function (PUF) is a promising hardware-based cryptographic primitive to prevent confidential information leakage. However, conventional techniques, such as weak and strong PUFs, have limitations in overcoming the trade-off between security and storage volume. This study introduces nanoseed-based PUFs that overcome the drawbacks of conventional PUFs using optical and electrical randomness originated from nanoseeds and a unique on-demand cryptographic algorithm. Ideally mixed PbS quantum dots and Ag nanocrystals in the same medium are exploited as nanoseeds to simultaneously promote independent optical and electrical randomness. The number of secured keys that can be generated on-demand by combining the optical and electrical features in parallel using shuffling method is almost infinite (>10 per square millimeter). The proposed PUF achieves a near-ideal Hamming distance in uniqueness and randomness tests, validating its cryptographic efficacy. Last, storage-free and on-demand PUF with the shuffling method are demonstrated using smartphones, realizing manufacturer-/user-friendly cryptography system.