Scalable plasmonic physical unclonable functions empowered by a multi-dimensional expanding strategy

Confronting the escalating global challenge of counterfeit products, developing advanced anticounterfeiting materials and structures with physical unclonable functions (PUFs) has become imperative. All-optical PUFs, distinguished by their high output complexity and expansive response space, offer a promising alternative to conventional electronic counterparts. For practical authentications, the expansion of optical PUF keys usually involves intricate spatial or spectral shaping of excitation light using bulky external apparatus, which largely hinders the applications of optical PUFs. Here, we report a plasmonic PUF system based on heterogeneous nanostructures. The template-assisted shadow deposition technique was employed to adjust the morphological diversity of densely packed metal nanoparticles in individual PUFs. Transmission images were processed via a hash algorithm, and the generated PUF keys with a scalable capacity from 2875 to 243401 exhibit excellent uniqueness, randomness, and reproducibility. Furthermore, the wavelength and the polarization state of the excitation light are harnessed as two distinct expanding strategies, offering the potential for multiscenario applications via a single PUF. Overall, our reported plasmonic PUFs operated with the multidimensional expanding strategy are envisaged to serve as easy-to-integrate, easy-to-use systems and promise efficacy across a broad spectrum of applications, from anticounterfeiting to data encryption and authentication.