Magnetic Anti-tamper Sensor

This Phase II SBIR will design and manufacture a unique anti-tamper sensor that will determine when adversarial acquisition or exploitation of U.S. technologies has been achieved. The effort will leverage off the results of the Phase I. The design is versatile and can be applied to many different levels of protection. The device operates like a sensitive switch which is read electrically, and the output could signal an alarm or the destruction of the protected technology. The state of the switch is determined by the configuration of magnetic elements. Tampering is detected when a magnetic field above ambient threshold is applied to the device the configuration of the magnetic elements is changed. The device is tamper sensitive with and without power, although reading the state of the sensor requires microwatts of power or less. The user will have the option of permanently disabling the reinitializing capacity of the device. The device combines the technologies of magnetic sensor and isolators with state-of-the-art microelectronic manufacturing. This allows the device to be very small, highly adaptable, and reliable. The device can be put into a custom package or fully integrated with other ICs at the wafer level.