Since its inception in 1991, MTO has helped create and prevent strategic surprise through
investments in compact microelectronic components such as microprocessors,
microelectromechanical systems, and photonic devices. MTO’s revolutionary work applying
advanced capabilities in areas such as wide-band gap materials, phased array radars, high-energy
lasers, and infrared imaging have helped the United States establish and maintain microsystems
superiority for decades.
MTO seeks to develop high-risk, high-reward technologies that continue DARPA’s mission of
creating and preventing strategic surprise, help to secure the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s)
technological superiority, and address the complex threats facing U.S. national security.
Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances
in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in
evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.
As MTO evolves to address future microsystems-related challenges in this unprecedented era of
advancement, the office is establishing a beyond-the-headlights strategy that focuses on three
heretofore nascent thrusts, each focused on addressing key challenges towards its mission to
dominate the microsystems ecology militarily and economically:
1. Scientific Disruption is developing technology to enable fundamentally new ways to
design and employ integrated circuits for the next generations of microsystems. While
Moore’s Law has shown remarkable resilience to the constant predictions of electronic
transistor scaling’s death over the past decade, quantum physics and Heisenberg
uncertainty may prove to be an ultimate limit over the next decade. Thus, MTO is
explicitly soliciting research topics that may lead to the development and proliferation of
the next transistor technology and the required building blocks and manufacturing
ecosystem around it. By identifying and cultivating multiple candidates, a step change to
a new scaling trajectory and the microsystem dominance that comes with it may be
possible. Three specific Scientific Disruption candidates, and the resulting new classes of
circuits, are of interest:
Photonic circuits (PCs). While photonics is not new to MTO, there is still much
to explore through using the power of light at the chip scale. Shifting from
fermion-based electrical circuits to boson-based photonic circuits enables a
massive data transport performance gain that would provide substantial
asymmetric microsystem advantages. MTO intends to invest in PC technologies
that expand the use of photonic interconnects, enable new materials and
wavelengths, and facilitate new architecture designs.
Quantum circuits (QCs). Quantum phenomena are theorized to offer dramatic
improvements over classical computing and sensing. The quantum technological
race is occurring within academic, commercial, and government channels across a
spectrum of plausible implementations. MTO intends to invest in both near- and
long-term instantiations of quantum technology to reduce the possibility of
commercial surprise, drive the discovery of new hardware metrics, and invent
scalable devices. In addition to technologies that will directly enable QCs, MTO
is also interested in foundational technologies that enable the reduction of QCs to
practice, such as heterogeneously integrated cryogenic cooling, advanced
superconducting junctions, and building blocks for chip-scale quantum systems.
Bio/Organic circuits (OCs). Biological and organic systems engage in complex
computation and sensing activities continuously at an efficiency and effectiveness
that often dwarfs their inorganic counterparts. MTO intends to invest in the
integration of biomolecules and micro-technologies to establish the viability of
OCs and explore hybrid bio-sensing and bio-compute microsystems. Disruptive
research topics that support bio-based methods for high-speed, low-power
compute and avenues for OCs that exceed performance of inorganic circuits are of
specific interest.
2. Microsystems manufacturing ecosystem is developing the infrastructure needed to
bring the needed sustainability to advanced microsystems. While the monetary cost of
manufacturing an electronic transistor decreases as the transistor shrinks, the natural
resource cost of fabricating microsystems is increasing monotonically with no relief in
sight. For example, the average water usage, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas
emission for each 300 mm wafer produced in 2021 was 5,810 L of water, 813 kW-hr, and
594 kg of CO2 equivalent, respectively. MTO is exploring new additive, subtractive, and
hybrid fabrication tools as well as technologies for the reuse and recycling of materials,
transistors, and circuits for the creation of advanced microsystems. Of specific interest
semiconductor materials, methods to predict fabrication and integration methods with
minimal data, and just-in-time application specific integrated circuit customization.
3. Dual use by design is recognizing that the DoD must take advantage of commercial
scaling but also find ways to build superior capability into defense microsystems. The
DoD’s exquisite microsystem performance demands, coupled with its comparatively tiny
volumes, place an inherent challenge on getting new technologies deployed at the speed
and cost its warfighters require. MTO recognizes that it must strengthen its partnership
with the commercial enterprise to ensure that new military microsystem technologies
have the commercial viability to become self-sustaining. Such commercially catalyzed
defense deployment will be purposefully pursued to ensure not only military
differentiation but also economic dominance within the microsystem domain. To that
end, MTO will explore new technologies in design, integration, and hardware security
that lead to impactful commercialization while supporting the security and performance
required for military systems.
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