Does anyone have any insights on how the actual physical destruction takes place? I would assume it is a chemical triggered by a shorted fuse?
A quick glance at the laws in California make it a felony to simply have in your possession "any sealed device containing dry ice or other chemically reactive material that is assembled for the purpose of causing an explosion." The definitions for other types of destructive devices are specific to scale, but this part is not.
Perhaps not an explosion within the meaning of applicable California statutes.
Looking at the pix that show chip fragmentation, I don't see evidence of reactive chemistry. No melted edges, no deposition of combustion products, no missing material that would suggest propulsive transport incident to a micro explosion caused by detonation of a tiny blob of, for example, lead styphnate or some other primer-like compound.
Exploding wires are an old technology, and don't involve "...chemically reactive material...". Think old-fashioned fuses, but with faster dynamics.
Maybe they have an on-board supercap that they dump into a buried trace, producing a brief high temperature copper plasma and a shock wave that breaks the chip?
Interesting technology, would like to know how they do the physical destruction.
Very nearly. Overcurrent spike to Vcc. Simple and obvious. (How'd they get a patent? GCHQ already certified drives that do this, from Stonewood? They use the Eclypt 600 series for their own TOP SECRET data.)
A quick glance at the laws in California make it a felony to simply have in your possession "any sealed device containing dry ice or other chemically reactive material that is assembled for the purpose of causing an explosion." The definitions for other types of destructive devices are specific to scale, but this part is not.