A biconcave-shaped random laser array for unclonable coding

Photonic barcodes with random fingerprints possess significant potential applications in anti-counterfeiting and security protection due to their unclonable characteristics. Here, a scalable coding strategy is proposed to realize the physical unclonable function (PUF) codes based on a random-distributed biconcave-cavity random laser (BCRL) array in microchannel . Its unique configuration exhibits scalable randomness induced by microcavities and the scatterers , demonstrating a PUF characteristics in lasing intensity variations with pump positions. The random intensity information is firstly used as 1st-order coding to generate the PUF codes. The CIE tristimulus values of the tricolor lasing is then established as 2nd-order coding. The obtained codes strongly rely on the relative position of the arrays, indicating excellent unclonability and high generation efficiency. This work supplies a low-cost way to generate PUF codes for security system, promoting random lasing applications in security protection.