Dual-State Programmable Oxide Transistor for Time-Based Cryptography.

Abstract

As conventional digital computing becomes increasingly constrained by scalability and energy-efficiency limits, computing based on intrinsic physical dynamics of devices has emerged as a promising alternative. In this context, three-terminal devices have attracted attention because their additional terminal offers greater flexibility for implementing higher-order dynamics than two-terminal devices. Here, we present a dual-state programmable oxide transistor (DUPOT) that exhibits a previously unreported form of high-dimensional dynamical behavior with both the threshold voltage (V_th) and the saturation current (I_sat) independently tunable. Additionally, the programmed V_th state exhibits long-term memory (LTM) characteristics, whereas the I_sat state shows short-term memory (STM) behavior, enabling more complex computing functionalities. We elucidate its operating mechanisms and demonstrate robustness, and further showcase its use in time-based cryptography, which fully exploits its rich dynamical behavior. Our array-level demonstration supports diverse forms of time-based cryptography, including time-release encryption and time-bound encryption, and can be extended to cloud cryptographic systems, marking a new milestone in the study of computing devices with higher-order dynamics.