Development of Optical PUF Hardware Security Technology Using RGB Light and Multilayer Graphene Diffractive Structures

Development of Optical PUF Hardware Security Technology Using RGB Light and Multilayer Graphene Diffractive Structures

The research team led by Professor Seong Chan Jun of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, together with Geon Mo Kim, an integrated Ph.D. student as the first author, and co-authors Yun Ji Hwang, Teajong Hwang, and Seo Jun Yoon, developed an optical physical unclonable function (PUF)-based hardware security authentication technology using multilayer graphene diffractive zone plates and RGB multi-wavelength light. Conventional optical PUFs can generate physically unclonable responses through complex light scattering and interference patterns, but they have limitations in converting analog optical images into stable binary responses suitable for practical authentication. In this study, the research team used different intensity combinations of red, green, and blue light as optical challenges and generated distinct optical responses by exploiting wavelength-dependent focal shifts and interference patterns produced by multilayer graphene diffractive structures. The team also designed a vision transformer-based AI model to analyze complex diffraction images and extract stable 16-bit binary authentication responses under repeated measurements. This technology suggests a new route for verifying the authenticity of semiconductor devices, security hardware, and next-generation authentication systems by using physically unclonable optical responses without separately storing digital secret keys. The study was published in Opto-Electronic Advances (IF: 22.4, JCR top 4.3%).

The link: https://doi.org/10.29026/oea.2026.260076