A. Wali, D. Rosenmann, Y. Liu, M. Jadhav, J.E. Metcalfe, A.V. Sumant
Argonne National Laboratory,
United States
Keywords: diamond, extreme environment, cryptography
Summary:
Cryptography is an essential component of all modern-day communications that ensures data security, protection and authentication. Despite its widespread implementation in ambient environment, generating stable and reliable cryptographic keys under extreme environments (such as high temperature and radiation exposures) remains profoundly challenging. Ultra-wide band gap (UWBG) materials such as diamond can offer promising avenues in this regard. In this article, we exploit the grain boundary defects found within nitrogen-incorporated ultrananocrystalline diamond (n-UNCD) film as an entropy source for generating cryptographic keys that remain operationally stable enduring temperatures as high as 700 ℃ (ex-situ) and beta radiation exposure (~ 15kilo Rad) for 54 hours each. The robustness of the keys is attributed to the exceptional inertness and radiation hardness of the n-UNCD film. Our results highlight remarkable potential of diamond towards developing robust information security protocols for emerging technological frontiers where the prevalent extreme environment severely limits the applicability of conventional silicon-based electronics