About the Microsystems Technology Office
The Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) aims to ensure the U.S.’s continued technological dominance, both militarily and economically. To do this, MTO pushes today’s boundaries in foundational science to create transformational impact for tomorrow.
This involves going beyond incremental improvements to existing technologies and seeking fundamental scientific breakthroughs that can create new capabilities and reshape entire industries.
MTO Office Director Whitney Mason discusses how MTO seeks revolutionary advances versus evolutionary capabilities. | 1:17 | More information on DVIDS
Source: DARPA | Tom Shortridge
Thrust Areas
Our three major focus areas address distinct challenges but also build upon and reinforce one another:
Circuit Development to Enable Next-generation Microsystems
We are developing technology to enable fundamentally new ways of creating useful circuits, specifically:
- Photonic Circuits (PCs): While photonics is not new to our office, there is still much to explore through using the power of light at the chip-scale. We are looking at expanding the use of photonic interconnects, examining new materials and wavelengths, and designing new architectures.
- Quantum Circuits (QCs): Quantum phenomena offer potentially dramatic improvements over classical computing and sensing. We are attempting to explore nearer-term to longer-term instantiations of quantum technology to reduce the possibility of commercial surprise, drive the discovery of new hardware metrics, and invent scalable devices.
- Organic Circuits (OCs): Biological and organic systems engage in complex computation and sensing activities every day at an efficiency and effectiveness that often dwarves its inorganic counterparts. We are seeking ways to enable the integration of biomolecules and micro-technologies, establish the viability of molecular integrated circuits, and explore hybrid bio-sensing and bio-compute microsystems.
Microsystems Manufacturing Ecosystem
We are building the infrastructure necessary to producing and improving advanced microsystems.
To achieve this, we are exploring new additive, subtractive, and combination fabrication tools and technologies to enable sustainable manufacturing, technologies to speed up time to market, and foundational ecosystem enhancements with far-reaching impact beyond the new circuits of tomorrow.
Dual-use by Design
We are developing technologies with both military and commercial applications, focusing on innovations that not only strengthen national security but also enhance the U.S. economy.
We are exploring new capabilities in design, integration, and hardware security that can take advantage of commercial scaling while also establishing differentiating capabilities in defense microsystems.
Rewinds
Leadership
MTO Technical Office leadership is responsible for guiding and overseeing the research and development activities within specific technical areas.
Opportunities
Opportunities to engage include R&D programs and efforts, challenge competitions, and technology transition efforts for the Microsystems Technology Office. | See all DARPA Opportunities | RSS feed for Opportunities
Use these filters to narrow your results by research topic or date. Search by keyword to find your specific MTO opportunity.
Search our Programs
Use these filters to narrow your results by research topic or status. Search by keyword to find your specific MTO program.
MTO Ideas Under Incubation
Before an idea becomes a program, it gets mulled, kicked around, and questioned. During this period of contemplation, our program managers talk – a lot – to experts, potential transition partners, and each other. But we often wonder: What information are we missing that would provide much-needed context for program development? Read through our "Ideas under Incubation" and if inspired, share your thoughts.
*See important disclaimers and notes
All-weather optical Communications
Can we improve the performance of free space optical communications to overcome obscurants? What are the challenges, opportunities, and limitations to these approaches? | Contact Program Manager Thomas Schratwieser
Advanced understanding and application of quantum superposition
Can we realize, in situ, robust control and sensing of structure and function for complex processes in chemistry, materials science, and biology at the atomic length-scale without averaging out the underlying phenomena? What are the approaches and challenges of each? | Contact Acting Deputy Director Jonathan Hoffman
Biological apertures
Can we create functional bio-apertures with tunable properties? How would we target biochemical and microbial interventions to enhance metal uptake, and sequestration within selected plant species? How can you apply microsystem design for functional use? | Contact Program Manager Daniel Ridge
Circuits On Demand
How can we achieve on-demand, custom integrated circuits for low-volume, niche defense applications? What design and manufacturing advances can we imagine that would displace incumbent state of the art design and microfabrication processes? | Contact Program Manager Todd Bauer
Directed Energy Healing
What field-operable technologies can be used to precisely locate and stop internal bleeding in the field within the golden hour? Are there possible internal, external, or combined approaches involving microsystems and directed energy delivery? | Contact Program Manager Huanan Zhang
Dynamic Tuning Microsystem Enhanced Separations
Can a compact platform enable highly selective purification processes for complex organic feedstocks? How can microscale process intensification be achieved and new thermodynamic regimes be exploited to enable high throughput and high purity chemical separation? | Contact Program Manager Huanan Zhang
Flexoelectricity Utilizing Nanostructure
What are the different approaches that can be applied to manufacture flexoelectric materials? What challenges remain for these approaches for scale and efficient production? How can flexoelectric materials be used? What are the properties and performance advantages for these materials? | Contact Program Manager David Meyer
Lunar Manufacturing Infrastructure, Energy Generation and Storage
A lunar economy will require in-situ resource utilization of lunar-abundant materials. What are the challenges and opportunities in isolating and purifying critical elements from regolith? Can these technologies scale for manufacture? Which energy solutions best suit a lunar environment? | Contact Program Manager Julian McMorrow
Nanofluidic Computing
Can we apply bio-inspired nanofluidics for novel computation? How can we emulate biological processes, such as the movement of ions in fluids, instead of traditional electronics, for image processing, as an example, using power consumptions on par with biological systems? | Contact Program Manager Yogendra Joshi
Photonic Reconfigurable Inference and Scalable Module
Can we develop a scalable, general-purpose 3D optoelectronic platform for energy-efficient, high-density parallel computation? What are the technology enablers to improve scaling, compute density, and energy efficiency with photonic integrated circuits? | Contact Program Manager Todd Bauer
Physical Intelligence in Materials
Can we develop foundational, high-quality materials, interfaces, and assembly schemes for soft robotics? What are the current challenges for the development, manufacturing and use of these multifunctional materials? | Contact Program Manager Julian McMorrow
Sequence defined polymer synthesis with molecular machines for microsystems applications
What approaches, platforms, and systems could enable synthesis of sequence-defined polymers (e.g., novel synthetic methods and/or molecular machines)? What DoW applications might such macromolecules unlock for catalysts, optical materials, textiles, and microsystems manufacturing? | Contact Program Manager John M. Hoffman
Skyrmion-based magnetic memory
How can we improve current volatile and non-volatile magnetic memory? Is it possible to produce ultra-dense magnetic memory that is energy efficient and intrinsically robust to thermal- and radiation-based errors? How would this change current computer architectures? | Contact Program Manager Thomas Schratwieser
Synthetic Biology for AI-Driven Manufacturing
Can we accelerate biosynthesis using biological neural networks to develop new materials or explore frontiers for computation? Can we leverage recent advances in synthetic biology and biological neural networks to realize complex, error-tolerant, non-linear circuits for analog computation? | Contact Program Manager Todd Bauer
Three dimensional microsystems
How do we surpass 2D design limitations and volumetric multi-material integration constraints to deliver high-performance 3D microsystems? Can we be bio-inspired to achieve more surface area for charge, heat or chemical exchange? What can these new three-dimensional microsystems enable? | Contact Program Manager David Meyer
Very large-scale photonic integrated circuits (VLPI)
What are the automated design tools, co-designed natively-optical algorithms and architectures that can produce future VLPI circuits? How can these platforms achieve revolutionary new commercial and military capabilities that surpass what can be done by current electronic-based platforms? | Contact Program Manager Anna Tauke-Pedretti
Brightest Minds in Science and Engineering
Our MTO program managers are visionary leaders whose experience spans industry, government, and academia. They conceive, plan, and oversee the high-risk R&D efforts for which we are best known. | See all DARPA program managers
Search our Program Managers
Use these filters to narrow your results by research topic or date. Search by keyword to find a specific MTO program manager or their research interests.
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