Smart Anti-Tamper Conformal Coating System for Electronic Circuits

Critical Technology (CT) lies within a variety of electronic circuits across US Navy weapon platforms and must be adequately protected from theft and unintentional transfer. Traditional protective hardware enclosures are bulky, require power, and require special thermal considerations because they are typically insulating. Luna proposes a simplified alternative in the form of a conformal coating system that will provide comprehensive protection of CT against tamper events including X-ray imaging, SEM, focused ion beam, IR imaging, and power analysis attacks. The full coating system will be engineered to have high thermal conductivity sufficient to enable rapid heat transport from underlying devices through the coatings and out to traditional heat sinks. The anti-tamper coating system will enable coating integrity monitoring via the underlying electronic circuit such that physical damage and electromagnetic tamper events may be assessed on the fly and CT rapidly removed from the system. The Phase I program will focus on demonstration of the coating system to delay/prevent tamper events and corresponding threat detection capabilities. The coatings will be optimized during the Phase II and a monitoring sensor system will be integrated with target electronic circuits/components to provide a suite of protection and real-time monitoring capabilities to the end-user.