Scalable and CMOS compatible hardware authentication using silicon photonic physical unclonable functions

We demonstrate the uniqueness, unclonability and secure authentication of N  = 56 physical unclonable functions (PUFs) realized from silicon photonic moiré quasicrystal interferometers (QCIs). Compared to prior photonic-PUF demonstrations typically limited in scale to only a handful of unique devices and on the order of 10 false authentication attempts, this work examines > 10 3 inter-device comparisons and false authentication attempts. Device fabrication is divided across two separate fabrication facilities, allowing for cross-fab analysis and emulation of a malicious foundry with exact knowledge of the PUF photonic circuit design and process. Our analysis also compares cross-correlation based authentication to the traditional Hamming distance method and experimentally demonstrates an authentication error rate AER = 0%, false authentication rate FAR = 0%, and an estimated probability of cloning (POC) below 10 − 30 . This work validates the potential scalability of integrated photonic-PUFs which can attractively leverage mature wafer-scale manufacturing and automated contact-free optical probing. Such structures show promise for authenticating hardware in the untrusted supply chain or augmenting conventional electronic-PUFs to enhance system security.