Emerging physical unclonable functions with nanotechnology

Abstract

Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are increasingly used for authentication and identification applications as well as the cryptographic key generation. An important feature of a PUF is the reliance on minute random variations in the fabricated hardware to derive a trusted random key. Currently, most PUF designs focus on exploiting process variations intrinsic to the CMOS technology. In recent years, progress in emerging nanoelectronic devices has demonstrated an increase in variation as a consequence of scaling down to the nanoregion. To date, emerging PUFs with nanotechnology have not been fully established, but they are expected to emerge. Initial research in this area aims to provide security primitives for emerging integrated circuits with nanotechnology. In this paper, we review emerging nanotechnology-based PUFs.