Voltage‐Reconfigurable Magneto‐Ionic Nanolayers in Dot Arrays for Probabilistic, Materials‐Engineered Security Primitives

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Big Data revolution demands advanced security solutions that are energy‐efficient, scalable, and resistant to emerging threats. Conventional encryption, based on algorithmic complexity, is resource‐intensive and increasingly vulnerable. To safeguard sensitive information, it is essential to develop innovative anti‐hacking and anti‐counterfeiting technologies that provide material‐level protection embedded at the smallest length scales. Here, we present athat exploits voltage‐controlled Nion migration within pre‐defined paramagnetic FeCoN dot arrays. This enables the creation of reconfigurable sub‐15 nm ferromagnetic sublayers with deterministic or probabilistic (single‐domain↔vortex) states and voltage‐tunable probabilities. These states facilitate robust magnetic fingerprinting and constitute self‐protected primitives suitable for physical unclonable functions and in‐memory probabilistic inference, while their stochastic orientation and chirality provide a platform for true random number generation. This architecture combines tamper resistance, low power consumption, and scalability, representing a significant leap toward next‐generation hardware security rooted in ion‐spin control at the nanoscale. A magneto‐ionic security‐by‐materials‐design strategy exploits voltage‐driven Nmigration in selectively contacted FeCoN dots, creating reconfigurable sub‐15 nm ferromagnetic sublayers with deterministic and/or probabilistic (single‐domain↔vortex) states, voltage‐tunable probabilities and fully stochastic orientation/chirality. These states function as self‐protected primitives for physical unclonable functions, true random number generation, and in‐memory probabilistic inference, establishing a new hardware‐security paradigm rooted in emergent nanoscale magneto‐ionic effects. advs76814-abs-0001 graphical