ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military microsystems technology researchers are approaching industry for fundamentally new ways to design and employ integrated circuits for the next generations of aerospace and defense systems.
Officials of the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., has issued a broad-agency announcement (HR001124S0028) for the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) Office-wide project.
This solicitation seeks fundamentally new ways to design and employ integrated circuits for the next generations of microsystems, and focuses on three technologies: photonic circuits; circuits for quantum computing; and bio/organic circuits.
Photonic circuits involves technologies that expand the use of interconnects for photonic computing, enable new materials and wavelengths, and facilitate new architecture designs.
Quantum computing
Quantum circuits are expected to offer dramatic improvements over classical computing and sensing, and seeks to reduce the possibility of commercial surprise, drive the discovery of new hardware, and invent scalable devices. This can involve heterogeneously integrated cryogenic cooling, advanced superconducting junctions, and building blocks for chip-scale quantum systems.
Bio/organic circuits seeks to integrate biomolecules and micro-technologies to establish the viability of bio/organic circuits and explore hybrid bio-sensing and bio-compute microsystems. Of particular interest are bio-based methods for high-speed low-power compute, and avenues for bio/organic circuits that exceed performance of inorganic circuits.
This project also seeks to develop the infrastructure necessary to sustain advanced microsystems. Areas of interest for quantum circuits are interconnect technologies for transferring quantum states between qubit platforms; improvements for processing chains for all types of quantum sensors; and high density low loss mixed signal transfer between room and quantum temperatures.
Biological integrated circuits
For biological circuits DARPA is interested in high-throughput molecular readers for full spectrum sequencing; 3D bio-templated self-assembly of microsystems; and highly-parallel DNA writing for long DNA writes for genome-scale complexity with low error rates.
For photonic circuits researchers are interested in applications for purely photonic circuits not realizable in electronic circuits; chip scale photonics for ultralow noise microwave sources; tunable chip scale ultrafast lasers; and fiber-inspired ultralow loss integrated photonics.
In manufacturing ecosystems, researchers want litho-and etch-free direct nanoscale semiconductor manufacturing; low-loss high-permeability/permittivity materials; high density cryogenic-to-room-temperature interconnects; atomically precise, multi-chemistry molecular manufacturing technologies; energy reclamation from low-grade waste heat; and reconfigurable multiscale manufacturing for onshore manufacturing.
Dual-use technologies
For dual use by design, researchers are asking for all-weather long distance high bandwidth communications; commercially relevant tool development challenge problems; conformal and malleable batteries; design and assembly of complex microsystems in supply-chain-free environments; reconfigurable additive manufacturing for multiple classes of materials; and context-aware imaging.
Companies interested should submit proposals to the DARPA BAA Tool no later than 1 Dec. 2025 online at https://baa.darpa.mil.
Email questions and concerns to DARPA at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/opp/8d0a7db5995b409b93cb9b61579b0ee1/view.
