Exploiting FeFET Switching Stochasticity for Low-Power Reconfigurable Physical Unclonable Function

Abstract

This paper investigates reconfigurable physical unclonable function (PUF) design by exploiting the polarization switching variation and stochasticity in ferroelectric field-effect-transistors (FeFETs). The proposed PUFs include 1-transistor/cell (1T/C) and 2T/C designs. The denser 1T/C PUF splits random ‘0’ and ‘1’ states using a tactically pre-defined reference. The 2T/C PUF needs no dedicated references and obtains unbiased random states by differentiating two FeFETs under a proposed sensing error cancellation scheme. Experimental measurements have shown the uniform randomness, uniqueness, repeatability and reconfigurability of the response. Further simulations using an experimentally calibrated multi-domain FeFET model show high energy efficiency and robustness on design parameters.