New hydrogel could make faking, cloning products next to impossible

Scientists have developed a novel hydrogel-based technology that provides each physical object with a unique, unclonable identity, addressing the challenge of authenticating genuine items in fields vulnerable to counterfeiting, such as medical implants and microchips. This hydrogel is created using a process called regional assembly crosslinking (RAC), combining polypyrrole (PPy) and polystyrene sulfonate (PSS) under an electric field to form a complex 3D network of ion-electron transduction junctions. These microscopic junctions produce distinctive electrical responses when pulsed, generating over 10^19 unique challenge-response pairs—far exceeding standard cryptographic requirements—and demonstrating high reliability and reproducibility even after repeated tests. The hydrogel’s vast challenge space and nonlinear internal dynamics make it practically impossible to clone or predict its behavior, even with advanced machine learning techniques. This breakthrough offers a promising physical authentication method that could secure not only microchips and medical devices but also flexible electronics, wearable