Conductive Ink Circuit Antitampering

In response to the Air Force solicitation for novel strain– and chemical–driven antitamper (AT) technologies at the die level, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a currently unknown and completely new Conductive Ink Circuit Antitampering (CICAT) technique based on chemical-driven AT technology at the die level. The CICAT applies conductive ink circuitry (CIC) to prevent reverse engineering by hiding die intraconnect patterns and also protects against X-ray inspection. This function-obfuscation technique only slightly (purposely) changes the die interconnectivity topology, and does not change at all the functionality of the integrated circuit (IC) die. The conductive ink circuits have two active degrees of freedom (DoFs) with highly variable characteristics: specific conductivity and conductive path cross-section. Those two extra DoFs allow a design with highly-flexible CICs that can mimic the exact electronic performance of regular die interconnects. The CICAT method gives a very low probability of reverse engineering and is highly tamper-resistant due to multilevel function obfuscation protection. For early verification, POC will, in Phase I, develop and test a preliminary prototype of the CICAT system. BENEFIT: Multilevel function obfuscation protection of highly tamper-resistant AT systems such as CICAT can be instrumental in such critical IC components as cryptoprocessors, memories, and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), wherever AT Security Level 4 at very high performance levels is needed. The CICAT product family can be attractive in Homeland Security, Army, Navy, and Air Force physical security applications, where tamper-resistant protection of critical security parameters is of utmost importance.