Wireless Anti-Counterfeiting Labels Using RF Oscillators With Graphene Quantum Capacitors

We propose here a lightweight, reconfigurable graphene-based physical unclonable function (PUF) for wireless identification and authentication applications. Specifically, the PUF-based anti-counterfeiting label consists of a micro-coil antenna and a graphene quantum capacitor, forming an LC oscillator. Natural fluctuations in the Dirac point and residue charge density of graphene enable each graphene oscillator to have a unique radio-frequency (RF) response (i.e., electromagnetic fingerprint), whose uniqueness and entropy can be further enhanced by exploiting the exceptional point (EP)-based (near-field) wireless interrogation system. These randomized and irreproducible RF responses can be properly discretized and digitized to form a binary bitmap of cryptographic keys. Our simulation results show that PUF keys generated by graphene oscillators can exhibit high uniqueness and randomness, large encoding capacity, as well as reconfigurability enabled by electrostatically or chemically tuning the graphene’s Fermi energy. The proposed PUF-based wireless anti-counterfeiting labels may open a new pathway for the development of lightweight security protocol for radio-frequency identification (RFID), near-field communications (NFC), wireless access control, and Internet-of-things (IoTs), among other wireless applications.