Chemical physically unclonable functions for anti- counterfeiting tracers combined by cloud authentication

Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) are often used as robust anti-counterfeiting labels because they have fingerprints of device element characteristics due to the variations and fluctuations in the dimensional accuracy during manufacturing. An individual fingerprint can become a powerful tool against counterfeiting. Nanobeacons (NBs) with embedded Raman reporters show strong intensity enhancement, stealth performance, and long-term chemical stability. In this study, we demonstrated authenticity judgment using a chemical PUFs based on the NBs, mobile Raman detector, and a smartphone. It can be applied in the form of an ink, and it can be seen that the NBs are randomly distributed in space. By changing the embedded reporter molecule, it was shown that the NBs tracking, and imaging are possible with multicolor coating. Authentication experiments verified the security of the chemical PUFs tracers, robustness, convenience and ease of use. The chemical PUFs tracers and authenticity system could become a state-of-the-art platform to realize unbreakable anti-counterfeiting.