Fully Resistive In‐Memory Cryptographic Engine with Dual‐Polarity Memristive Crossbar Array

Abstract

As data volume and complexity increase, conventional software-basedencryption methods face significant challenges, including vulnerabilityto attacks and high computational demands. This study proposesa hardware-based cryptographic engine using a dual-polarity memristivecrossbar array with Ta/HfO2/RuO2 memristors, utilizing stochasticand deterministic operations for enhanced security and efficiency. The systemintegrates random key generation and XOR-based logic operations within thememristive array, enabling robust encryption and decryption of binary datawith a fully resistive data representation. Experimental validation of alphabetimage data encryption and the array scale simulation of individual fingerprintauthentication are conducted to validate the robustness of the proposedhardware and cryptographic method. The results demonstrate the potentialof the proposed hardware for homomorphic encryption, enabling securedata processing without decryption, which can pave the way for memristivehardware to evolve into resistance-based digital computing hardware.