Papertronics; post-quantum cryptography; hot-carrier degradation.
Researchers from Binghamton University used commercial parchment paper, commonly used in baking, along with a standard carbon dioxide laser and water-based conductive ink to create disposable, single-use electronic circuits.
The laser selectively removes the paper’s thin silicone coating in specific patterns, exposing the water-absorbing cellulose fibers underneath. The channels act as a guide for water-based conductive inks that the team used to build circuits with features as small as 250 micrometers wide with 300 micrometer spacing.
“The laser essentially writes wettability onto an unwettable surface,” said Seokheun “Sean” Choi, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Binghamton, in a press release. “Wherever the laser touches, the paper becomes receptive to our functional inks. Everywhere else, the silicone coating acts as a natural insulator.”
The technique was used to create resistors whose resistance can be tuned over three orders of magnitude by adjusting the ink formulation; interconnects with sheet resistance as low as approximately one ohm per square; capacitors tunable from microfarads to millifarads; and fully functional low-pass and high-pass RC filters with frequency response closely matching theoretical predictions. [1]
Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) designed a post-quantum cryptography (PQC) chip for wireless biomedical devices, like pacemakers and insulin pumps.
“Tiny edge devices are everywhere, and biomedical devices are often the most vulnerable attack targets because power constraints prevent them from having the most advanced levels of security. We’ve demonstrated a very practical hardware solution to secure the privacy of patients,” said Seoyoon Jang, an MIT electrical engineering and computer science graduate student, in a press release.
The chip implements two different PQC algorithms, Kyber and BIKE, as well as a true random number generator and enough redundancy to protect against power side-channel attacks. It also includes an early fault-detection mechanism for voltage glitches. The team said the device achieved between 20 to 60 times higher energy efficiency than all other PQC security techniques they compared it to, with a more compact area than many existing chips.
“PQC is very secure algorithmically, but making a device resilient against physical attacks usually requires additional countermeasures that pump up the energy consumption at least two or three times. We want our chip to be robust to both security threats in a very lightweight manner,” Jang said. “At the end of the day, because of the techniques we utilized, we can apply these post-quantum cryptography primitives while adding nothing to the overhead, with the added benefit of robustness to side-channel attacks.” [2]
Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara, Technische Universität Wien, and Samsung Research America uncovered the physical mechanisms behind hot-carrier degradation.
Using quantum simulations, the team determined that what triggers the breaking of a silicon-hydrogen bond is not the cumulative effect of many electrons hitting the bond, but actually a single high-energy electron that weakens the silicon-hydrogen bond and pushes the hydrogen atom out of position.
The researchers also found that hydrogen follows quantum-mechanical laws rather than classical ones as it detaches from the bond, behaving more like a cloud or a wave packet. “Our results show that the interplay between electrons and nuclei in a highly non-classical regime is what drives bond breaking,” said Woncheol Lee, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Barbara, in a press release. “This process doesn’t fit into the usual picture of heating-induced damage; it’s a short-lived quantum event that we can now model without needing to fit it to an experiment.”
Chris Van de Walle, a professor at UC Santa Barbara Materials Department, added, “The quantum framework we developed gives materials scientists a predictive tool to assess which chemical bonds are most likely to break in extreme conditions, thus opening the door to engineering more stable materials with longer lifespans.” [3]
[1] Z. Rafiee, R. Zhang, S. Choi. High-Density Papertronics via Laser-Written Hydrophilicity on Hydrophobic Parchment Paper. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Article ASAP https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsami.6c03065
[2] S. Jang, S. Maji, R. Agrawal, et al. A 28nm 0.86μJ/Op Post-Quantum Secure Authentication Engine with 8.5fJ/bit TRNG and SCA/Fault Tolerance for Wireless Biomedical Devices. IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC 2026) https://cicc2026.exordo.com/programme/presentation/5
[3] W. Lee, M. E. Turiansky, D. Waldhör, et al. Resonant states and nuclear dynamics in solid-state systems: The case of silicon-hydrogen bond dissociation. Phys. Rev. B 113, 075304. https://doi.org/10.1103/3ync-nxm8
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