Demonstration of a Passive IC Tamper Sensor Based on an Exposed Floating Gate Device in a Standard Logic Process

• Published in: IEEE transactions on electron devices Vol. 66; no. 6; pp. 2735 - 2740
• Main Authors: Liu, Muqing, Kim, Chris H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Charge injection; CMOS; Computer architecture; Counterfeit; Counterfeit electronics; embedded Flash (eFlash); Exposure; Flash memory (computers); floating gate (FG); Humidity; Integrated circuits; logic-compatible; Metals; Particle density (concentration); physical attack; recycled chips; Sensors; Temperature sensors; Threshold voltage; Transistors
• ISSN: 0018-9383; 1557-9646
• DOI: 10.1109/TED.2019.2909558

We present an embedded Flash (eFlash) memory-based powerless nonvolatile tamper sensor for efficiently detecting counterfeit ICs. By exposing the floating gate (FG) node of a logic-compatible eFlash cell to the environment, the proposed sensor can record any subtle physical event that affects the charge stored on the exposed FG. The proposed sensor is demonstrated in both 65-nm and 0.35-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mu \text{m} </tex-math></inline-formula> standard CMOS technologies. Extensive test results confirm that suspicious activities such as temperature charge injection, humidity rises, and increased dust particle density in the cavity can be recorded powerlessly using the proposed sensor.