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You surely remember one of the hallmarks of the Mission: Impossible series that shows a secret agent receiving his instructions on a tape or other device that then self-destructs and goes up in a cloud of smoke.
Actually, the military is actively working on creating such self-destructing – transient – electronics. DARPA's Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program seeks "electronic systems capable of physically disappearing in a controlled, triggerable manner. These transient electronics should have performance comparable to commercial-off-the-shelf electronics, but with limited device persistence that can be programmed, adjusted in real-time, triggered, and/or be sensitive to the deployment environment."
Getting pretty close to this Hollywood scenario, minus the smoke, scientists now have demonstrated remote destruction capability of high performance silicon electronics. They also show that in case of tempering, dislocation, or light exposure, electronics on for instance stolen or lost hard drives can self-destruct.
"Compared to the previous attempts which are inherently slow, need supply or stored chemicals and compromised performance of Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) electronics, our process is based on merging of Joule Heating effect based physics and expendable polymer chemistry and we have shown it can be destroyed within 10 seconds," Muhammad Mustafa Hussain, an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), tells Nanowerk. "Ours is a novel approach towards physical transient electronics based on thermal expansion of expandable material to destroy electronics in few tens of seconds."
Structure of the KAUST team's integrated destructible device. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag)
This work, reported in Advanced Materials Technologies ("Expandable Polymer Enabled Wirelessly Destructible High-Performance Solid State Electronics") is a pragmatic avenue towards implementing a destruction mechanism in electronic products.
The researchers showed that joule heating effect induced thermal expansion and stress gradient between thermally expandable advanced polymeric material and flexible bulk mono-crystalline silicon (100) can be employed to destroy high performance solid state electronics as needed and in under 10 seconds.
They also demonstrated that their approach can be integrated with the most commonly used silicon substrate in the electronics industry that are used for mobile phones, sim cards, hard disks, and so on, that could require a triggered destruction mechanism.
The number of hardware thefts are increasing every year. According to Consumer Reports, the number of only smartphone theft nearly doubled from 2012 to 2013, affecting 3.1 million U.S. users in 2013. IDG Research reports that 10% of US smartphone users are affected by smartphone theft. More than half of the respondents to the 2010 BSI Computer Theft Survey were victims of laptop theft. These security thefts cause billions of dollars in losses and millions of dollars are spent to develop various hardware and software based techniques to prevent these thefts.
Software-based methods such as setting passwords and data encryption are not yet completely foolproof and reliable. Furthermore, law enforcement and customs agents could force a user to reveal their passwords. The ultimate and completely foolproof method to prevent any information theft or unauthorized access is the on-demand complete destruction of the electronics in a stolen, misplaced or hacked device.
"This motivated us to work towards developing a destructible electronics system that is compatible with current state-of the-art high performance CMOS chips and can revolutionize today's highly secure military applications that may need to self-destruct on command within seconds," note Abdurrahman Gumus and Arsalan Alam, who co-first authored the paper. "Moreover, instead of a complete destruction of all electronics, we were also interested in on-demand only partial destruction, for example, only the memory areas of the laptop to prevent any data theft."
a) Destruction of a single silicon chip on demand. b-d) Demonstration of modular destruction of a chip. Resistors were destructed sequentially on demand. e) Another demonstration of modular destruction. Selective destruction of electrical connections caused to turn off the LEDs independently. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag) (click on image to enlarge)
"Although, a few works have been previously reported under physical transient electronics, none are as pragmatic and fast as our destruction mechanism," they add.
Researchers already have reported various methods to develop transient electronics. One method is submerging electronics in their respective dissolvable solutions (see: "Transient electronics that fight disease and then dissolve away (w/video)" and "Toward dissolvable electronics for implants and sensors").
Another method is destroying electronics using microfluidics as chemical etchants (see for instance: "Mission possible: This device will self-destruct when heated (w/video)").
And Xerox's PARC has recently demonstrated a method allowing complete destruction within 10 seconds where a chip is fabricated on strained glass that can shatter after remotely triggered with laser light.
A smartphone based operation of remotely destructible electronics. An app controls the operation where the destruction command can be remotely activated using a smartphone. After entering a desired password, a chip is destroyed on demand. (Video: Integrated Nanotechnology Laboratory, KAUST)
"Although most of the current transient electronic approaches focus on polymeric and biologically-derived materials, they have limitations such as thermal instability and inherent low carrier mobility which restrict them to be used for high performance CMOS for logic and memory applications," explains Hussain. "Developing CMOS-based transient electronic systems is important where performance is an crucial criteria such as in security and defense applications. CMOS technology can also be integrated with commonly known fabrication techniques and with ultra-large-scale-integration densities."
The next stage in the team's efforts will be to demonstrate the destruction mechanism in commercial state-of-the-art electronic devices. Moreover, they will also strive to further reduce the destruction time to a few seconds.
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/s...utm_campaign=nanowerkemergingtechnologiesnews
Actually, the military is actively working on creating such self-destructing – transient – electronics. DARPA's Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program seeks "electronic systems capable of physically disappearing in a controlled, triggerable manner. These transient electronics should have performance comparable to commercial-off-the-shelf electronics, but with limited device persistence that can be programmed, adjusted in real-time, triggered, and/or be sensitive to the deployment environment."
Getting pretty close to this Hollywood scenario, minus the smoke, scientists now have demonstrated remote destruction capability of high performance silicon electronics. They also show that in case of tempering, dislocation, or light exposure, electronics on for instance stolen or lost hard drives can self-destruct.
"Compared to the previous attempts which are inherently slow, need supply or stored chemicals and compromised performance of Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) electronics, our process is based on merging of Joule Heating effect based physics and expendable polymer chemistry and we have shown it can be destroyed within 10 seconds," Muhammad Mustafa Hussain, an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), tells Nanowerk. "Ours is a novel approach towards physical transient electronics based on thermal expansion of expandable material to destroy electronics in few tens of seconds."
Structure of the KAUST team's integrated destructible device. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag)
This work, reported in Advanced Materials Technologies ("Expandable Polymer Enabled Wirelessly Destructible High-Performance Solid State Electronics") is a pragmatic avenue towards implementing a destruction mechanism in electronic products.
The researchers showed that joule heating effect induced thermal expansion and stress gradient between thermally expandable advanced polymeric material and flexible bulk mono-crystalline silicon (100) can be employed to destroy high performance solid state electronics as needed and in under 10 seconds.
They also demonstrated that their approach can be integrated with the most commonly used silicon substrate in the electronics industry that are used for mobile phones, sim cards, hard disks, and so on, that could require a triggered destruction mechanism.
The number of hardware thefts are increasing every year. According to Consumer Reports, the number of only smartphone theft nearly doubled from 2012 to 2013, affecting 3.1 million U.S. users in 2013. IDG Research reports that 10% of US smartphone users are affected by smartphone theft. More than half of the respondents to the 2010 BSI Computer Theft Survey were victims of laptop theft. These security thefts cause billions of dollars in losses and millions of dollars are spent to develop various hardware and software based techniques to prevent these thefts.
Software-based methods such as setting passwords and data encryption are not yet completely foolproof and reliable. Furthermore, law enforcement and customs agents could force a user to reveal their passwords. The ultimate and completely foolproof method to prevent any information theft or unauthorized access is the on-demand complete destruction of the electronics in a stolen, misplaced or hacked device.
"This motivated us to work towards developing a destructible electronics system that is compatible with current state-of the-art high performance CMOS chips and can revolutionize today's highly secure military applications that may need to self-destruct on command within seconds," note Abdurrahman Gumus and Arsalan Alam, who co-first authored the paper. "Moreover, instead of a complete destruction of all electronics, we were also interested in on-demand only partial destruction, for example, only the memory areas of the laptop to prevent any data theft."
a) Destruction of a single silicon chip on demand. b-d) Demonstration of modular destruction of a chip. Resistors were destructed sequentially on demand. e) Another demonstration of modular destruction. Selective destruction of electrical connections caused to turn off the LEDs independently. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag) (click on image to enlarge)
"Although, a few works have been previously reported under physical transient electronics, none are as pragmatic and fast as our destruction mechanism," they add.
Researchers already have reported various methods to develop transient electronics. One method is submerging electronics in their respective dissolvable solutions (see: "Transient electronics that fight disease and then dissolve away (w/video)" and "Toward dissolvable electronics for implants and sensors").
Another method is destroying electronics using microfluidics as chemical etchants (see for instance: "Mission possible: This device will self-destruct when heated (w/video)").
And Xerox's PARC has recently demonstrated a method allowing complete destruction within 10 seconds where a chip is fabricated on strained glass that can shatter after remotely triggered with laser light.
A smartphone based operation of remotely destructible electronics. An app controls the operation where the destruction command can be remotely activated using a smartphone. After entering a desired password, a chip is destroyed on demand. (Video: Integrated Nanotechnology Laboratory, KAUST)
"Although most of the current transient electronic approaches focus on polymeric and biologically-derived materials, they have limitations such as thermal instability and inherent low carrier mobility which restrict them to be used for high performance CMOS for logic and memory applications," explains Hussain. "Developing CMOS-based transient electronic systems is important where performance is an crucial criteria such as in security and defense applications. CMOS technology can also be integrated with commonly known fabrication techniques and with ultra-large-scale-integration densities."
The next stage in the team's efforts will be to demonstrate the destruction mechanism in commercial state-of-the-art electronic devices. Moreover, they will also strive to further reduce the destruction time to a few seconds.
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/s...utm_campaign=nanowerkemergingtechnologiesnews
