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Physically unclonable cryptographic primitives using self-assembled carbon nanotubes

Nature Nanotechnology volume 11, pages 559–565 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Information security underpins many aspects of modern society. However, silicon chips are vulnerable to hazards such as counterfeiting, tampering and information leakage through side-channel attacks (for example, by measuring power consumption, timing or electromagnetic radiation). Single-walled carbon nanotubes are a potential replacement for silicon as the channel material of transistors due to their superb electrical properties and intrinsic ultrathin body, but problems such as limited semiconducting purity and non-ideal assembly still need to be addressed before they can deliver high-performance electronics. Here, we show that by using these inherent imperfections, an unclonable electronic random structure can be constructed at low cost from carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes are self-assembled into patterned HfO2 trenches using ion-exchange chemistry, and the width of the trench is optimized to maximize the randomness of the nanotube placement. With this approach, two-dimensional (2D) random bit arrays are created that can offer ternary-bit architecture by determining the connection yield and switching type of the nanotube devices. As a result, our cryptographic keys provide a significantly higher level of security than conventional binary-bit architecture with the same key size.

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Figure 1: Random bits based on a 2D carbon nanotube array.
Figure 2: Surface charge effects of a patterned substrate on SDS–CNT assembly.
Figure 3: 2D array of self-assembled CNT devices.
Figure 4: Trench-width dependent self-assembly behaviour revealed by I–V curves.
Figure 5: Random bit generation and statistical analysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank J. Bucchignano and S. Dawes for their technical assistance with electron-beam lithography, W. Haensch and H. Riel for management support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, 12203, New York, USA

    Zhaoying Hu & Michael Liehr

  2. IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, 10598, USA

    Jose Miguel M. Lobez Comeras, Hongsik Park, Jianshi Tang, Ali Afzali, George S. Tulevski, James B. Hannon & Shu-Jen Han

  3. School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu 702-701, Korea

    Hongsik Park

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  1. Zhaoying Hu
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Contributions

S.J.H. conceived and designed the experiments. Z.H., J.L.C., and H.P. performed the carbon nanotube array fabrication. Z.H. and J.T. performed the electrical measurement. A.A. synthesized the NMPI monolayer. G.S.T. provided carbon nanotubes. Z.H. and S.J.H. analysed the data. Z.H. and S.J.H. wrote the manuscript All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shu-Jen Han.

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Hu, Z., Comeras, J., Park, H. et al. Physically unclonable cryptographic primitives using self-assembled carbon nanotubes. Nature Nanotech 11, 559–565 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.1

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