Hardware and Information Security Primitives Based on Two-Dimensional Materials and Devices.

It is now well established that hardware security is a major concern for the entire semiconductor ecosystem with annual losses in billions of dollars. Similarly, information security is a critical need for the rapidly proliferating edge devices that continuously collect and communicate a massive volume of data. While silicon-based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology offers security solutions, these are mostly inadequate, inefficient, often inconclusive, and resource extensive in time, energy, and cost, offering tremendous scope for innovation in this field. Furthermore, silicon-based security primitives have shown vulnerability to machine learning (ML) attacks. Finally, the demise of dimension scaling of silicon transistors and the computing bottleneck enforced by von-Neumann architecture aggravate the security challenges. In recent years, two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been intensely explored to mitigate these security challenges. In this review, we summarize 2D-materials-based hardware security solutions such as camouflaging, true random number generators (TRNGs), watermarking, anti-counterfeits, physically unclonable functions (PUFs), and logic locking of integrated circuits (ICs) along with the discussion on their reliability and resilience to ML attacks. In addition, we also examine the role of native defects in 2D materials in developing high entropy hardware security primitives. Finally, we discuss the existing challenges for 2D materials, which must be overcome for large-scale deployment of 2D integrated circuits to meet the security needs of the semiconductor industry. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.