LAUSR

Quantum phenomena cannot be predicted by the uncertainty principle. As a quantum phenomenon, radioactive decay has been used as an entropy source to generate random numbers. In this article, we present the design and development of an innovative quantum entropy chip (QEC) that produces analog random pulses when emitted alpha particles resulted from radioactive isotope (americium-241) decay hit the sensor. The analog pulse generated by a QEC can be digitized into random numbers by an entropy extractor. The QEC provides security foundation for device authentication as well as a quantum random number generator (QRNG), especially suited for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices due to its small size. We have successfully designed and fabricated the QEC as a wafer for supporting a system-on-chip (SoC) Internet Protocol (IP) so that the QEC can be embedded into a microcontroller unit (MCU) or central processing unit (CPU). In addition, we built a stochastic model to estimate the entropy of the quantum source and evaluated statistical randomness and robustness against temperature, voltage variations, aging effects, and physical attacks. Finally, we demonstrate various applications using the QEC such as side-channel-resistant primitives and device authentication.