Novel, Non-Intrusive Nanodeposition Technique for the Deposition of a Variety of Hardware Anti-Tamper Coatings

This effort will focus on identifying new hardware design and protection techniques and technologies that will delay reverse engineering and exploitation, slowing an adversary as much as possible in compromising U.S. technologies when they fall under their control. To date, much Government and industry effort has focused on passive board/chip coatings and self-destruct concepts, but as the DoD AT organizations have evaluated them, the effectiveness and PEO and PM acceptance of these types of techniques has been limited. Other concepts that have been assessed by the AT community include manufacturing processes, obfuscation, encryption, active coatings, volume protection and other such techniques, and a variety of these and others will be evaluated during this proposed Phase I effort and during subsequent Phase II and other follow-on efforts. This effort will therefore focus on developing innovative deposition techniques utilizing a variety of emerging nanoparticle-based nano-coatings (NanoMesh) as one of several key non-intrusive hardware anti-tamper techniques (NIHATT) that may be applied to a variety of classified military, defense, and security devices.