Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) are a promising technology for generating cryptographic primitives using random imperfections in a physical entity. However, the keys inside PUFs are still vulnerable as they must be written into non-volatile memories and shared with participants that do not hold the PUF before secure communication. Here we show that pairs of identical PUFs (twin PUFs) can be fabricated together on an aligned carbon nanotube array and used for secure communication without key pre-extraction and storage. Two rows of field-effect transistors are fabricated perpendicular to the carbon nanotube growth direction, randomly producing three types of transistor channel—based on metallic nanotubes, semiconducting nanotubes and no nanotubes—that can be used to extract ternary bits for use as a shared key. The twin PUFs exhibit high uniformity, uniqueness, randomness and reliability, as well as a consistency of approximately 95%. We show that separated twin PUFs can provide secure communication with a bit error rate of one bit per trillion via a fault-tolerant design.

物理不可克隆函数 (PUF) 是一种很有前途的技术，用于使用物理实体中的随机缺陷生成密码原语。但是，PUF 中的密钥仍然容易受到攻击，因为它们必须写入非易失性存储器并与未持有 PUF 的参与者共享，然后才能进行安全通信。在这里，我们展示了成对的相同 PUF（双 PUF）可以在对齐的碳纳米管阵列上一起制造，并用于安全通信，而无需密钥预提取和存储。垂直于碳纳米管生长方向制造两排场效应晶体管，随机产生三种晶体管沟道——基于金属纳米管、半导体纳米管和无纳米管——可用于提取三进制位用作共享密钥. 孪生PUF表现出高均匀性、唯一性、随机性和可靠性，以及大约95%的一致性。我们表明，分离的双 PUF 可以通过容错设计以每万亿分之一比特的误码率提供安全通信。