International Business Machines Corporation
SUBLITHOGRAPHY GATE CUT PHYSICAL UNCLONABLE FUNCTION

Abstract:

Methods, and devices related to authentication of chips using physical unclonable function (PUF) are disclosed. The semiconductor chip includes a substrate. The semiconductor chip includes multiple devices formed on the substrate. Each device includes multiple fins. A gate is formed on the multiple fins with a gate cut (CT) design that results in random distribution of complete gate cut and incomplete gate cut for each of the multiple devices based on a natural process variation in semiconductor manufacturing for each device. A physical unclonable function (PUF) region is defined in accordance with the random distribution.