Electrically Reconfigurable Optical PUFs Based on MoS2 Photoluminescence Modulation

Abstract Conventional optical security keys are fundamentally static-offering fixed encoding states and relying on irreversible processes or bulky apparatus-rendering them vulnerable to modeling, duplication, and physical attacks. Here, we present an electrically reconfigurable optical PUFs based on photoluminescence (PL) modulation in structurally disordered MoS₂ microstructures. By leveraging a multidimensional “one-static-two-dynamic” encoding strategy, our system integrates electrically invariant grayscale patterns with gate-tunable PL intensity and emission wavelength, enabling pixel-specific, high-entropy responses that are both reprogrammable and non-volatile. The devices are fabricated via lithography-free van der Waals stacking, generating intrinsic spatial randomness without compromising scalability. Electrostatic gating induces reversible and layer-sensitive bandstructure modulation-mechanistically validated by first-principles calculations-which governs the observed PL shifts across 41 gate voltages. Binary keys extracted from these states yield near-ideal Hamming distance statistics and an exceptionally low total authentication error probability (< 2 × 10⁻ ³⁸), with a maximum selection entropy of 6.375-surpassing conventional PUFs benchmarks. We further implement a dual-stage authentication protocol that couples zero-bias grayscale screening with voltage-controlled PL verification. This framework provides a practical, tamper-resilient, and quantum-attack-resistant solution for next-generation hardware security.