Photo credit: Jose-Luis Olivares
MIT researchers have developed a miniature tamper-proof ID tag that uses terahertz waves. It’s tiny, cheap, and secure, as the tag mixes microscopic metal particles into the glue that sticks the tag to an object.
Once the tag is affixed, terahertz waves are used to detect the unique pattern those particles form on the item’s surface. Similar to a fingerprint, this random glue pattern is used to authenticate the item. The researchers developed a light-powered anti-tampering tag that is only 4 square millimeters in size. A machine-learning model was then used to help detect tampering by identifying similar glue pattern fingerprints with more than 99% accuracy.
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These metal particles are essentially like mirrors for terahertz waves. If I spread a bunch of mirror pieces onto a surface and then shine light on that, depending on the orientation, size, and location of those mirrors, I would get a different reflected pattern. But if you peel the chip off and reattach it, you destroy that pattern,” said Ruonan Han, an associate professor in EECS, who leads the Terahertz Integrated Electronics Group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics.
[Source]
