Researchers eye quantum, photonic, and bio/organic integrated circuits for next-gen transistor technology
ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers are on the lookout for enabling technologies that may lead to the next generation of integrated circuit technology -- particularly concerning a potential new scaling trajectory and the microsystems dominance that comes with it.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., issued an updated broad agency announcement (HR001124S0028) on Monday for the agency's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO).
Photonic circuits
Primary interests in this solicitation include photonic circuits; quantum circuits; bio/organic circuits; microsystems manufacturing ecosystems; dual use by design.
Photonic circuits involves 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. Photonic circuit technologies may expand the use of photonic interconnects, enable new materials and wavelengths, and facilitate new architecture designs.
Quantum circuits may offer dramatic improvements over classical computing and sensing, and also involves heterogeneously integrated cryogenic cooling, advanced superconducting junctions, and building blocks for chip-scale quantum systems.
Bio/organic circuits are for complex computation and sensing, and involves biomolecules and micro-technologies to establish the viability of bio-organic circuits, hybrid bio-sensing, and bio-compute microsystems.
Microsystems sustainability
Microsystems manufacturing ecosystem involves the sustainability to advanced microsystems, and involves additive, subtractive, and hybrid fabrication tools for the reuse and recycling of materials, transistors, and circuits for advanced microsystems.
Of interest in microsystems manufacturing are automated control of materials synthesis for non-traditional semiconductor materials; ways to predict fabrication and integration approaches with minimal data; and just-in-time application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) customization.
Dual use by design involves commercial scaling and ways to build superior capability into defense microsystems. Topics of interest include fault-tolerant quantum computing; high efficiency quantum-optical transducers; high-rate quantum-optical entanglement generators; matrixed quantum sensors for sensing and signal processing; chip-scale quantum systems; scalable application-specific quantum hardware; qubit manufacturing; biological circuits; biochemical processor alternatives; microsystem translators to control biological function; portable, customizable nanopore sensing; self-assembled biomolecular transistors and integrated circuits photonic circuits; chip-scale hyperspectral sensors; conformal optical phased arrays; high intensity light sources; portable high-power terahertz emitters; ultrafast scattered light analyzers; and high-density intra-chip 3D photonic interconnects.
Companies interested should submit abstracts no later than 9 March 2025, and full proposals no later than 9 May 2025 to the DARPA BAA Tool online at https://baa.darpa.mil.
Email questions or concerns to DARPA's Whitney Maston at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/opp/2b143590ab6b4b708019d9479626b52f/view.
John Keller | Editor-in-Chief
John Keller is the Editor-in-Chief, Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine--provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronics and optoelectronic technologies in military, space and commercial aviation applications. John has been a member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since 1989 and chief editor since 1995.
