Xerox PARC Unveils Self Destructing Chip

Security is an important asset to everyday life, especially in today's technology driven world. As technology grows, so does the number of threats to our security. To combat these threats, engineers at Xerox PARC have created a chip that can self destruct on command. The chip was unveiled last Thursday at DARPA's "Wait, What?" event in St. Louis.

The chip itself is made of a modified Gorilla Glass, the same glass that many smartphone manufacturers use, tempered to create invisible stress on the surface on the glass. Once the glass is heated, the chip with shatter into millions of pieces making the chip completely useless. The trick is the invisible stress on the glass; because the glass has so much stress on it's surface, once it shatters the entire chip breaks into millions of tiny glass shards. Gregory Whiting, a senior scientist at PARC, explained “We take the glass and we ion-exchange temper it to build in stress. What you get is glass that, because it’s heavily stressed, breaks it fragments into tiny little pieces.” The self destruct can be triggered by various methods, including by laser, electronic signal to the chip, or simply a physical switch.

During the demonstration on Thursday, the chip was hooked up to a resistor that, when a light was shined on it, caused the built up stress in the glass to shatter. The pieces even continued to break for tens of seconds after the initial self destruction.

Government organizations and major businesses with highly sensitive information would the prime customers for this product. For example, it would be much safer to hide an encryption key or extremely sensitive information in this chip rather than traditional means. But I can also see this technology being very useful for everyone, not just major corporations and government agencies. If Xerox can implement this chip in a smaller form factor for, say smartphones, it can significantly decrease the chance for identity or information theft. For example if a smartphone gets stolen, the user has the option to completely destroy the chip, leaving the thief with useless fragments of glass.