Pixelated Tellurium Nanowire Assemblies for Flexible and Polarization-Driven Multimodal Anticounterfeiting

Anticounterfeiting technologies capable of enabling both visual authentication and machine-readable encryption are critically demanded. Here we present a wafer-scale and flexible tellurium nanowire (TeNW) platform with programmable localized orientation, enabling dual-mode anticounterfeiting based on polarization-encoded information. By employing a lock–shear and lift-off strategy, pixelated and highly aligned TeNW arrays with feature sizes down to 5 μm are realized on arbitrary rigid and flexible substrates, exhibiting dichroic ratios of up to 4.6 and stretchability exceeding 100%. Beyond passive optical security, the semiconducting nature of TeNWs allows these oriented arrays to function as active channels in asymmetric Schottky photodetectors, delivering broadband photoresponse (405–1064 nm), an anisotropic photocurrent ratio of 2.35, and an ultrafast response time of 430 μs under self-powered operation. Leveraging this capability, polarization-encoded information can be transduced into polarization-sensitive electrical signals, establishing a hardware-level security paradigm that physically encodes information in the material rather than in algorithms.