A team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), led by Professor Kyung Min Kim, has developed an oxide transistor that can independently hold a long-term memory and another that changes over time. The work was published in Advanced Materials.
The researchers used this feature to create time-based encryption: as well as the key, the information must be read at the right moment. Unlike other methods, that moment is set by physical changes inside the semiconductor itself, not only by external clocks or software.
In the experiments, a letter “T” only became readable after 8.4 seconds. In another test, the same array first showed a decoy letter, “K”, and only revealed the correct letter at 37 seconds. The team also proposed a way of applying the system to data stored in the cloud.
The technology could help protect information that must not be known before a certain date, such as exam papers or tender bids. The researchers now want to lower the operating voltage and make the devices more uniform and reliable.
