Laser fabrication and evaluation of holographic intrinsic physical unclonable functions

Abstract

Optical Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are well established as the most powerful anticounterfeiting tool. Despite the merits of optical PUFs, widespread use is hindered by existing implementations that are complicated and expensive. On top, the overwhelming majority of optical PUFs refer to extrinsic implementations. Here we overcome these limitations to demonstrate for the first time strong intrinsic optical PUFs with exceptional security characteristics. In doing so, we use Computer-Generated Holograms (CGHs) as optical, intrinsic, and image-based PUFs. The required randomness is offered by the non-deterministic fabrication process achieved with industrial friendly, nanosecond pulsed fiber lasers. Adding to simplicity and low cost, the digital fingerprint is derived by a setup which is designed to be adjustable in a production line. In addition, we propose a novel signature encoding and authentication mechanism that exploits manifold learning techniques to efficiently differentiate data reconstruction-related variation from counterfeit attacks. The proposed method is applied experimentally on silver plates. The robustness of the fabricated intrinsic optical PUFs is evaluated over time. The results have shown exceptional values for robustness and a probability of cloning up to $$10^{-14}$$ 10 - 14 , which exceeds the standard acceptance rate in security applications.

Quantifying the Sensitivity and Unclonability of Optical Physical Unclonable Functions

“…In order to evaluate the probability of cloning (POC), we calculated the overlap integral of the “like” and the “intra” distributions. [ 49–52 ] Considering an optimistic case where the clone differs only by 2% from the original one (scatterers relocation, or randomly removed, or removed and added), we estimate POC values that are of the order or smaller than , see Figure S6, Supporting Information.…”

Femtosecond Laser Ablation of Quantum Dot Films toward Physical Unclonable Multilevel Fluorescent Anticounterfeiting Labels

“…However, there are many factors that affect the geometry in the process of femtosecond laser processing, such as laser pulse energy and fluctuations in air temperature, humidity, and material properties, resulting in moderate repeatability of the processed micro-/nanostructures. The randomness characteristic of the structure endows unreplicable features of outputs, which is a great advantage for anticounterfeiting labels that require unclonability, unlike other application scenarios. , Moderate repeatability combined with programmable ablation and high precision perfectly matches with the technical requirements of physical unclonable fluorescent anticounterfeiting labels. Therefore, we applied FsLA technology to quantum dot (QD) films to fabricate a physical unclonable multilevel fluorescent anticounterfeiting label .…”

Laser‐Induced Carbonization for Anticounterfeiting Tags

“…Since the authentication of tagged products at the user end is rare, systematic authentication at both the manufacturer and dealer end is readily implemented to avoid fake entries. Traditional anticounterfeiting tags such as quick-response codes, radiofrequency identifications, graphicals, [4][5][6] holograms, [7,8] and watermarks [9] have been used for consumer products. However, their sizes and brightness to represent an identity; the encoded digitalized information of the bits can be stored and used for authentication.…”