The School of Physics at Zhengzhou University (ZZU) has recently made significant progress in developing time-dependent physical unclonable functions (TD-PUFs) and their applications in anti-counterfeiting encryption. This research provides new insights into dynamic information security and anti-counterfeiting technologies.
Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are crucial in the field of encryption due to their unique random structural units. Traditional PUFs rely on static structural differences in spatial dimensions to generate keys, which limits their encoding capacity and anti-counterfeiting complexity, making them vulnerable to advanced attacks. Thus, developing new PUF systems with dynamic response capabilities has become a research priority.
Inspired by the time evolution of wave functions in quantum mechanics, the research team innovatively utilized carbon dots (CDs) with long-lived triplet excitons to create TD-PUFs. These TD-PUFs can dynamically evolve over time, generating multiple irreplicable key patterns, significantly enhancing system complexity and anti-counterfeiting capabilities. The team also introduced a pixel matrix function (PMF) to mathematically model the dynamic behavior of PUFs in both spatial and temporal dimensions, increasing encoding capacity by five orders of magnitude.
The researchers further demonstrated their innovation by creating a "dynamic anti-counterfeiting peacock painting" using carbon dot materials. This artwork unpredictably changes its structure and colors over time, combining artistic value with anti-counterfeiting functionality. This study breaks the spatial limitations of traditional PUFs by introducing the temporal dimension into encryption systems, laying the material and theoretical groundwork for next-generation dynamic information security technology.
The findings were published in the renowned journal Light: Science & Applications under the title "Time-dependent physical unclonable functions by long-lived triplet excitons in carbon dots". Doctoral students Hu Yanwei and Cao Qing are the first authors, with Professors Shan Chongxin and Liu Kaikai serving as corresponding authors.