The use of physical unclonable functions (PUFs) to
generate fingerprints for authentication of chips or larger
electronic systems or for generation of internal cryptographic
keys for data transfer is investigated. With the implementation of
PUFs, each chip or electronic system has its own identity, which
should prevent counterfeiting and “night shift” problems. There
are various approaches to creating PUFs, and one of them is the
so-called coating PUF, which would open the way to cost-effective
and flexible protection during and after chip fabrication. In this
work, we present two different capacitance measurement
methods for fabricated PUF structures consisting of individual
metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors. The goal is to
obtain an easy and highly accurate measurement setup. Our
fabricated PUF chips show an intended variation in capacitance
and therefore generate characteristic fingerprints. We show that
the parasitic capacitances and measurement variation are much
smaller than the intended fluctuation of our PUF capacitances.
This enables us to generate reliable and less error-prone
fingerprints. Our presented measurement methods in
combination with the technological PUF structures have shown
to be accurate and reliable for flexible commercial application.
«The use of physical unclonable functions (PUFs) to
generate fingerprints for authentication of chips or larger
electronic systems or for generation of internal cryptographic
keys for data transfer is investigated. With the implementation of
PUFs, each chip or electronic system has its own identity, which
should prevent counterfeiting and “night shift” problems. There
are various approaches to creating PUFs, and one of them is the
so-called coating PUF, which would open the way to c...
»