Sim, Kyumin Son, Hyunseok Yu, Seokjun Hwang, Hae Chul Song, Jong Hyun Chris Baek, Seung-heon Park, Hamin 2025-11-17T07:32:27Z 2025-11-17T07:32:27Z 2025-11-11 2025-11 2199-160X https://pubs.kist.re.kr/handle/201004/153512 Ensuring secure and energy-efficient authentication of resource-constrained devices has become a critical challenge owing to the rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. Physically unclonable functions (PUFs) that exploit inherent manufacturing variations to generate device-unique keys have emerged as a promising hardware-based security primitive. In this study, a PUF architecture is proposed that utilizes multi-level programming of flash memory capacitors. Reliable and reproducible binary responses are generated across multiple programmed states by extracting flat-band voltage variations from capacitance–voltage measurements. Performance is evaluated using the uniformity, P-value, inter-Hamming distance, and intra-Hamming distance, which indicated strong randomness, uniqueness, and stability. To further enhance the entropy and cryptographic strength, a hash-based message authentication code (HMAC)-based key derivation function is integrated, which transformed the PUF outputs into high-entropy pseudorandom keys. The final architecture supported key generation with zero standby power and is compatible with commercially available memory structures, thereby enabling low-cost and scalable deployment in secure IoT systems. These results highlight the potential of multi-level memory-based PUFs as a lightweight and robust solution for next-generation hardware security. English Wiley-VCH Verlag Hardware Security for Edge Computing Via CMOS-Compatible Multi-Level Flash Memory with Hash-Based Key Generation Article 10.1002/aelm.202500484 1 Advanced Electronic Materials, v.11, no.19 Advanced Electronic Materials 11 19 Y scie scopus 001589468300001 2-s2.0-105018511540 Nanoscience & Nanotechnology Materials Science, Multidisciplinary Physics, Applied Science & Technology - Other Topics Materials Science Physics Article INTERNET UNCLONABLE FUNCTIONS AUTHENTICATION TECHNOLOGIES CHALLENGES physically unclonable function (PUF) HMAC-based key derivation function (HKDF) multi-level flash memory hash-based message authentication code (HMAC)