Bio-inspired electronic fingerprint PUF device with single-walled carbon nanotube network surface mediated by M13 bacteriophage template

Human fingerprints are randomly created during fetal activity in the womb, resulting in unique and physically irreproducible fingerprint patterns that are applicable as a biological cryptographic primitive. Similarly, stochastically knitted single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) network surfaces exhibit inherently random and unique electrical characteristics that can be exploited as a physical unclonable function (PUF) in the authentication. In this study, filamentous M13 bacteriophages are used as a biological gluing template to create a random SWNT network surface with mechanical flexibility, with electrical properties determined by random variation during fabrication. The resistance profile between two adjacent electrodes was mapped for these M13-mediated SWNT network surfaces, with the results demonstrating a unique resistance profile for each M13-SWNT device, similar to that of human fingerprints. Randomness and uniqueness measures were evaluated as respectively 50.5% and 50% using generated challenge–response pairs. Min-entropy for unpredictability evaluation of the M13-WNT based PUFs resulted in 0.98. Our results showed that M13-SWNT random network exhibits cryptographic characteristics when used in a bio-inspired PUF device.