Positive-Bias-Temperature-Instability Induced Random-Trap-Fluctuation Enhanced Physical Unclonable Functions on 14-nm nFinFETs

We report one sort of weak physical unclonable functions (PUFs) composed of 14-nm nFinFETs with entropy of the random-trap-fluctuation (RTF). After the positive-bias-temperature-instability (PBTI) stress at high temperatures (85 °C ~ 150 °C), the generation of abundant random traps at the interface of gate-dielectric layers and channel efficiently improves cryptographic parameters of nFinFET-PUFs. Results show that bit-error-rates of the MOSAIC plots reduce to 1.4%; average values/standard-deviation of the inter- and intra- Hamming-distance reach 50.28%/1.7% and 0.38%/0.42%, respectively. This work provides an implacable technique to boost characteristics of weak PUFs through combinations of device-reliability and cryptography.