Multilevel, solar-blind, and thermostable physical unclonable functions based on host-sensitized luminescence of β-Ga2O3:Dy3+

Optical physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are powerful tools to combat counterfeiting, owing to their unpredictable preparation processes and unique, identifiable information content. Achieving high entropy and robustness in optical PUFs is essential for practical applications but remains challenging. This study demonstrates a multilevel, solar-blind, and thermostable PUF based on host-sensitized luminescence of trivalent dysprosium (Dy3+) in β-phase gallium oxide (β-Ga2O3). The controllable occupation of Dy3+ in both tetrahedral and octahedral Ga3+ sites of β-Ga2O3 results in heterochromatic optical emission, which affords the resulting PUFs with a multilevel encoding capacity of 44096 at 64 × 64 pixels. The wide bandgap (∼4.6 eV) of β-Ga2O3:Dy3+ confines the PUF response to solar-blind irradiation, encompassing a light spectrum in the range 230–270 nm, which does not overlap with ambient light, ensuring interference-free stimulation and therefore achieving 100% recognition accuracy. Additionally, the high thermal quenching activation energy (0.386 eV) of β-Ga2O3:Dy3+ provides thermal stability, enabling the PUFs to operate from room temperature up to 125 °C. With near-ideal uniformity, uniqueness, and reproducibility, these PUFs hold considerable promise for practical applications in anticounterfeiting and encryption.