Programs

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Fritze

3-D integrated circuits offer significant performance benefits over two dimensional (2-D) integrated circuits based on the electrical and mechanical properties arising from the new geometrical arrangement. In 2-D integrated circuits, the reduction of transistor features over time ("Moore's Law")... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The 3-D Micro Electromagnetic Radio Frequency Systems (3-D MERFS) program was launched in mid-2004 to revolutionize the performance, cost, and form factor for advanced RF and MMW radar and communications systems, thereby fulfilling the unmet military & national security need for widely... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Healy

Military signals analysis today is expensive in hardware, time, operator effort, and computation. Are there smarter ways to glean information from the complex soup of broadband electronic signals bouncing through the atmosphere? What are the fundamental limits of our current methods based on analog-to-digital conversion... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Joseph Mangano

Optically-pumped solid-state HEL systems use arrays of diode lasers to pump the final laser gain medium. Existing DARPA programs, like SHEDS, aim to increase the individual wall plug efficiency of each of these diodes thus reducing the waste heat that must be removed from the lasing material and leading to improved... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Healy

Military sensing and communication systems operate in challenging electromagnetic environments where very high linear dynamic range is required to detect small target signals obscured by a strong background of interference, jammers, and clutter. The difficulty is compounded by the increasing tendency to require that these same systems... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Stuart Horn

The overall goal of the Adaptive Focal Plane Array (AFPA) program is to demonstrate a high-performance focal plane array (FPA) that is widely tunable across the relevant wavebands in the infrared (IR) spectrum (including the short-wave infrared (SWIR), mid-wave infrared (MWIR), and long-wave... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Gregory Kovacs

This program will explore several advanced technologies and microsystem concepts. The program comprises technologies for fabrication of complex three dimensional integrated circuits; heterogeneous integration using bonding; new materials, processes, and devices for avalanche photo detectors in the infrared range using the Geiger mode; advanced... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Joseph Mangano

The Adaptive Photonic Phase-Locked Elements (APPLE) program will enable all-electronic combining of high power laser beams within an agile conformal, aperture. The APPLE vision is a coherently-phased array of optical apertures that directly addresses the long standing DoD need for flexible, multi-function... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Jagdeep Shah

The objective of the APS program is to develop advanced, on-chip, photonic switching devices which are fabricated in a CMOS-compatible process and which maximize switching speed while simultaneously minimize device power dissipation, transmission losses, area, and sensitivity to ambient temperature variations. The photonic switches developed in this program will be... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Sanjay Raman

There exists an unmet military need for flexible, affordable, hand-held military communications systems. Programs such as JTRS and various software-defined radio efforts have attempted to address this need, but have encountered difficulty in obtaining small, high performance RF tunable filters and filter banks. The absence of these components... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Stu Horn

Content Forthcoming... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Haney

The overall goal of the C20I program is to demonstrate optical interconnections between multiple silicon chips that will enable data communications between chips to be as seamless as data communication within a chip. For electrical technology, the primary limitations to implementing high-speed interconnections are achieving high packing... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Healy

The Cognitively Augmented Design for Quantum Technology (CAD-qt) program is developing and demonstrating revolutionary robust optimization-based methodologies for the design of electronic and photonic devices whose novel functional capabilities derive from operation within the quantum regime. This program will transform the device... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Fritze

The Carbon Electronics for RF Applications (CERA) program will develop wafer-scale graphene synthesis approaches and ultra-high-speed, low-power graphene-channel field effect transistors for RF/mm-wave circuits... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Ronald Esman

The Channelized SIGINT and ELINT Receiver for UAV Applications (ChaSER) program leverages breakthroughs in microwave photonics to develop a novel photonic radio frequency (RF) receiver, designed to dramatically reduce the size, weight and power (SWAP) of electronic countermeasures/electronics support measures systems... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Joseph Mangano

Coherently-Combined High-Power Single-Mode Emitters (COCHISE) aims to develop breakthrough technologies to dramatically improve diode bar lifetime , reliability and beam quality. Additionally, these technologies will lead to high power, coherently-combined, laser architectures that are up to three times more efficient than existing diode-pumped... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Mark Rosker

The development of CS electronics has been motivated by their unique materials properties relative to those of silicon. However, the advantages of the incumbency of Si integrated circuits (ICs), the enormous investment that has been made in such technologies, the remarkable progress in VLSI integration and device scaling, and the dramatic cost reductions for Si ICs have combined to limit the market penetration of CS technologies... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Steve Pappert

Many future military applications require a revolutionary navigation system for the missions in GPS-denied environments. One of the major technical challenges in navigation without GPS, or its aid, is that position errors caused by gyro drift grow with the cube of time during a mission. Therefore, it is urgent and crucial to develop a highly precise gyro technology that will support required accuracies comparable to GPS-aided inertial navigation systems. The COmpact Ultra-Stable Gyro for Absolute Reference (COUGAR) program will develop a novel fiber optic resonator gyroscope architecture that removes performance barriers of the past and... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Amit Lal

The development of chip-scale atomic clock will enable ultra-miniaturized (wristwatch in size) and ultra low power time and frequency references for high-security UHF communication and jam-resistant GPS receivers. The use of these ultra-miniature time reference units can greatly improve the mobility and robustness of any military systems and... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Healy

The Discovery and Exploitation of Structure in Algorithms (DESA) Program seeks a dramatic reduction of expert human programmer involvement in porting critical high-performance algorithmic capabilities into new and upgraded computing platforms and into new classes of processing hardware... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The goal of the Disruptive Manufacturing Technologies (DMT) program is to achieve significant and pervasive cost savings, and/or decreases in cycle time, for existing and planned military procurements. One such opportunity for cost savings exists with... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Haney

The objective of this program is to demonstrate technology for a dynamic routing and packet switching optical Network that keeps Data in the Optical Domain (DOD-N), thus eliminating the need for any Optical-to-Electrical-to-Optical (OEO) conversions, as well as removing other bottlenecks in the current communications systems. (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Nibir Dhar

The US military has a pressing requirement for compact, reliable, and cost-effective photodetectors. Avalanche photodetectors offer high gain, low dark count, high reliability and robustness, and small form factor needed in military applications. The Deep Ultraviolet Avalanche Photodetectors (DUVAP) program will demonstrate avalanche photodiodes... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Mark Rosker

The Efficient Mid-Wave Infrared Lasers (EMIL) program goal is to demonstrate high-power (≥1W) mid-infrared (MIR) lasers operating between 3.8 and 4.8 µm in continuous wave (CW) at room-temperature, with good beam quality, and achieving revolutionary wallplug efficiency of 50%.

Program Manager: Dr. Ronald Esman

The Electro-Magnetic Pulse Tolerant Microwave Receiver Front End (EMPiRe) program will develop a novel, robust, and sensitive microwave receiver front-end capable of surviving and operating in high energy electromagnetic environments while maintaining high sensitivity, bandwidth, and dynamic range... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Jagdeep Shah

The EPIC program requires research to develop innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, and/or systems in the following areas: 1) CMOS-Compatible High Performance Si Nanophotonic Devices The first major interest of the EPIC program is the development and demonstration of a complete suite of high performance... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Jeffrey Rogers

The Semiconductor Technology Focus Center Research Program is a collaborative effort between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Science & Technology (DUSD/S&T), and the Microelectronics Advanced Research Corp. (MARCO) which will establish new Focus Centers in "Materials, Structures & Devices" and in... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Sanjay Raman

The Department of Defense (DoD) has a wide range of applications that will benefit from sensitive and comparatively low-power, low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) with ultra-high linearity, such as radar, communication, and electronic warfare systems. Increased radio frequency (RF) spectrum utilization/crowding leading to more severe friendly or hostile signal interference challenges necessitates... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Devanand Shenoy

State-of-the-art cameras, on UAVs for example, are a trade-off between field of view and weight. In addition they have insufficient spectral range and non-uniform illumination over the focal plane for a large field of view. This is due to their need for multiple lenses to correct for... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Sanjay Raman

Content Forthcoming... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Amit Lal

HERMIT seeks to attain micromechanical devices capable of operating under harsh conditions-e.g., under large temperature excursions, large power throughputs, high g-forces, presence of corrosive substances, etc.-while maintaining unprecedented performance, stability, and lifetime (including storage lifetime). Although HERMIT realizations of micromechanical RF switches are... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Mark Rosker

The objective of the HiFIVE program is to develop an integrated, microfabricated vacuum electronic (VE) high-power amplifier (HPA) circuit for use in high-bandwidth, high-power transmitters. Additionally, the program will demonstrate operation of such a circuit over a 5 GHz frequency band centered at 220GHz. The HIFIVE program is pursuing innovative technologies and... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Amit Lal

Animal world has provided mankind with locomotion over millennia. For example we have used horses and elephants for locomotion in wars and conducting commerce. Birds have been used for sending covert messages, and to detect gases in coal mines, a life-saving technique for coal miners. More recently, olfactory training of bees has been used to locate mines and weapons of mass destruction. (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Stuart Horn

The primary goal of this program is to establish the technology for high-speed sampling and high spatial resolution infrared focal plane arrays that operate without cryogenic cooling, and have response in the three-to-five micron spectral band, and broadband response as required by the application. Applications include affordable sensor arrays for both threat detection and imaging. (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Nibir Dhar

The U.S. military has a pressing requirement for compact, rapid, reliable, and cost-effective chemical agent point sensors. This need is made clear by the growing specter of the potential use of weapons of mass destruction by either global terrorist organizations, or unfriendly nations. This is the motivation behind DARPA's Laser-induced photoacoustic spectroscopy (L-PAS) program. (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The primary goal of the Microtechnologies for Air-Cooled Exchangers (MACE) program is the development and demonstration of air-cooled exchangers that offer significant reductions in thermal resistance from case to air and the total electrical power used to force the air through the system.... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Polla

The Micro Cryogenic Coolers program aims to develop innovative technologies in the area of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) implementations of Micro Cryogenic Coolers, with the ultimate objective being the realization of micro-scale devices and sub-systems with unprecedented performance, attained via micro-scale targeted cryogenic cooling of only the needed... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Polla

The MEMS/NEMS S&T Fundamentals effort seeks to create focus centers dedicated to advancing a number of core technologies considered essential to the advancement of MEMS/NEMS technology. Research investigates innovative approaches capable of having a pervasive impact on continuing technology advances with significant potential for contributing... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Polla

The MGA program seeks to attain tiny separation analyzer-based chemical warfare agent (CWA) sensors capable of orders of magnitude reductions in analysis time, detection limit, and power consumption, over equivalent bench top systems, while maintaining true and false alarm rates on par with bench top gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS) systems. (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The Microantenna Arrays: Technology and Applications (MIATA) program is developing microantenna array technology having sensitivity and uniformity equal to that of conventional passive mmW/IR imagers without the need for RF amplifiers. This program is reducing the size, weight, and power consumption of FPA millimeter wave/IR imagers, with special emphasis on technology to combine... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Amit Lal

MINT seeks the creation of micro and nano scale low-power navigation sensors that allow long term (hours to days) GPS denied precision navigation. The goal of the MINT program is to create high-precision navigation aiding sensors that directly measure intermediate inertial variables, such as... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Sanjay Raman

Long lasting micro power sources are critical for a large array of military unattended sensor applications, including perimeter defense networks, detection of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and environmental protection sensors. The Micro Isotope Power Sources (MIPS) program is investigating a range of approaches to achieving compact, mW-level power sources, including alphavoltaic... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Stuart Horn

With the impetus toward micro-air and -ground vehicles for military applications, there is a compelling need for imaging micro-sensors compatible with these small platforms. Dramatic reduction in size and weight also significantly impacts the format of individual warfighter systems... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Healy

Emerging DoD and commercial scenarios envision large-scale deployment, coordination, and monitoring of ubiquitous imaging systems to keep an eye on complex environments. Stringent challenges in cost, platform related volume, weight, and form factor constraints, and the effective exploitation of the resulting large volume of imagery motivate a principled re-examination of the structure, function, and... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Devanand Shenoy

The Super Molecular Photonics (MORPH) program is an exploratory effort to demonstrate that engineered molecular "Nano-Systems" can achieve spectacular increases in optical non-linearity. Specifically, high performance electro-optic materials leading to greater than 100x reduction in operating voltages for RF light wave modulation, and new classes of photorefractive materials which will result in greater than 1000x... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Amit Lal

Provide flexible access to complex Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) fabrication technology in a wide variety of materials and to a broad multi-disciplinary user base via the MEMS Exchange service. In addition, insure self-sustained operation of MEMS Exchange after the end of the program by adding several process modules to the existing repertoire and increasing... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Haney

Nanoscaled lasers will enable close integration of photonic and electronic devices needed in emerging high-speed processing-intense computing and communication platforms. In addition to reduced size, these lasers are expected to be ...

Program Manager: Dr. Joseph Mangano

The goal of the Maskless Nanowriter program is to produce a maskless electron-beam-direct-write (EBDW) lithography tool using a novel Reflection Electron Beam Lithography (REBL) concept invented by KLA-Tencor. A critical component of the Maskless Nanowriter program is the use of... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Amit Lal

NEMS seeks to develop a nano-electromechanical switch technology that demonstrates switching voltages of 1-10 volts, and switching times on the order of 1-100 nanoseconds. The technology is enabled by...

Program Manager: Dr. Amit Lal

The Navigation-Grade Integrated Micro Gyroscope program seeks to attain tiny, low-power, rotation rate sensors capable of achieving performance commensurate with requirements for GPS-denied navigation of small platforms, including individual soldiers, unmanned (micro) air vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, and even tiny (e.g., insect-sized)... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Healy

Dealing with non-linearity: Military sensing and communication systems operate in challenging environments where very high linear dynamic range is required to detect small targets or signals in the presence of electromagnetic interference and clutter. Taken together with the simultaneous trend towards very high instantaneous bandwidths, this requirement poses significant... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The primary goal of the NanoThermal Interfaces (NTI) program is to solicit high-risk, high-reward ideas and approaches that can provide significant improvements in the performance of thermal interface materials (TIMs) for DoD applications. DARPA ap-preciates that commercial development of TIM technologies has been underway for many years, but... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Stuart Horn

This program supports revolutionary advances in imaging technology, which operates at extremely low levels of ambient illumination, from the visible through the short wave infrared. Imaging at extremely low levels of illumination, where images are obtained with only a few photon events, allows operation in a wide variety of difficult environments, and imaging in conditions where current... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Haney

The objective of the PhASER program is to develop a fundamental photonic integrated circuit (PIC), termed "Unit Cell", which can act as a reconfigurable building block in the formation of a high-throughput, low-power, analog signal processor. (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Ronald Esman

The objective of Lineaer Photonic RF Front-End Technology (PHOR-FRONT) is to provide a universal photonic radio frequency (RF) front-end that helps bring the vision of high dynamic range and high instantaneous bandwidth (IBW) RF-to-bits receivers to fruition. More specifically, the PHOR-FRONT program will develop and... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Adel Saleh

Parametric Optical Processes and Systems (POPS) aims to demonstrate all optical processing based on Four Wave Mixing (FWM) in optical fibers and silicon waveguides to achieve data rates of 100 Gb/s - 1Tb/s. This will require development of components such as... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Ronald Esman

The objective of the Photonic-enabled Simultaneous Transmit and Receive (P-STAR) program is to develop a wideband microwave antenna interface that replaces a conventional electronic transmit/receive (T/R) module-antenna combination.... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Fritze

The objective of the Radhard by Design Program is to develop and demonstrate design and layout techniques to support the fabrication of strategically radiation hardened integrated circuits from pure design approaches; no changes in fabrication or materials. The program is focused on foundry-type silicon technologies, ultra-deep submicron (e.g. < = 130 nm technology) geometries, and digital... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Devanand Shenoy

The goal of the RIEDAR program is to develop a revolutionary approach to detect hazardous materials from a large distance in sub-second time scales using laser-based optical techniques. To achieve this goal, RIEDAR will demonstrate a novel, compact, high-power UV-tunable nanosecond and NIR femto-second pulsed lasers....

Program Manager: Dr. Joseph Mangano

The RIFL program is developing kilowatt-class, efficient, coherently-combinable fiber laser amplifiers that operate narrowline and with near-diffraction-limited beam quality. These fiber laser amplifiers will enable the development of....

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Polla

Content Forthcoming... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Jeffrey Rogers

The Sensor Tape Program will develop low-cost medical sensor systems to support DoD missions, in particular to measure the cumulative effect of blast exposure. The program will develop... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Mark Rosker

The Scalable Millimeter-wave Architectures for Reconfigurable Transceivers (SMART) program will develop an integrated, surface-emitting panel architecture for millimeter wave (MMW) transceiver arrays. The program will culminate in an objective demonstration of a large (at least 400 element), coherent, active electronically steerable array (AESA) achieving an output power density of 5W/cm2 and a total layer thickness of less than 1cm. Taken together... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dennis Healy

Putting teraflop computing into the hands of the individual soldier will enable local control over sophisticated sensing like high-resolution radar imaging, space-time adaptive processing (STAP), urban structure mapping and occupant tracking, and multi-dimensional automatic target recognition (ATR). But, today's general purpose military processor units are too expensive, too big, and use too much power to bring such a vision to reality. (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Fritze

The Steep-subthreshold-slope Transistors for Electronics with Extremely-low Power (STEEP) program's goal is to develop novel transistor technologies for logic circuits with extremely low power consumption, without sacrificing performance. Due to leakage power issues, advanced silicon CMOS transistor technologies will not be suitable for... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Devanand Shenoy

There are currently three main forms of solid state memory for electronics: SRAM, DRAM and Flash. SRAM is very fast, needs little power, has a very large endurance, and can be incorporated directly on the logic chip.... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The primary goal of the Tip-Based Nanofabrication (TBN) program is to develop the capability to controllably manufacture nanostructures, specifically nanowires, nanotubes, and quantum dots, with nanometer-scale control over the size, orientation, and position of each nanostructure. TBN aims to enable... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Sanjay Raman

The Department of Defense (DoD) focuses on a wide array of applications for high-performance mixed-signal (combined analog and digital) circuits. The Technology for Frequency Agile Digitally Synthesized Transmitters (TFAST) program's ultimate goal is to develop high frequency digital synthesizer and related circuits with high dynamic range, low phase noise, low direct current (DC) power, and wide bandwidth. The preferred transistor technology for such circuits needs to have extremely high speed (high unity cut off... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The objective of the Thermal Ground Plane (TGP) program is to develop a practical, high-performance thermal substrate that can improve the performance of almost all DoD systems, with a focus on the development of high-thermal conductivity substrates for multi-chip modules (MCM). The program will investigate innovative uses ofContent Forthcoming... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Dean Collins

At the present time, the United States does not have a comprehensive program to certify that the integrated circuits that are going into U.S. weapons systems do not contain malicious circuits. In response to these concerns, DARPA has initiated the TRUST in Integrated Circuits program... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Jagdeep Shah

UNÍC focuses on demonstrating high-performance, CMOS-compatible photonic technology for high-throughput, non-blocking and power-efficient intrachip photonic communications networks. UNÍC addresses the challenge of demonstrating high photonic devices with... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Jagdeep Shah

Autonomous and semi-autonomous platforms are being increasingly used for surveillance and precision weapons delivery. Such platforms operate under severe constraints on the size, weight and power consumption of the sensing, processing and communication systems they carry. Furthermore, these platforms usually operate in harsh conditions where mechanical ruggedness and thermal stability... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Michael Haney

Visible InGaN Injection Lasers (VIGIL) aims to demonstrate injection lasers emitting in green, at l=500 nm. Specific program goal is to demonstrate green injection lasers operating continuous wave at... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Mark Rosker

Enable new RF applications and capabilities through the development and exploitation of the material, device, and circuit properties of wide bandgap semiconductors. Specific goals include the demonstration of: (a) > 100 mm semi-insulating, high quality substrates (Phase I), (b) epitaxial material technologies with better than + 1% composition, thickness, and doping control (Phase I)... (more information)

Program Manager: Ms. Sharon Beermann-Curtin

Revolutionize high power electrical energy control, conversion, and distribution by establishing a new class of solid state power switching transistors employing wide bandgap semiconductor materials. Specific goals include... (more information)

Program Manager: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The Young Faculty Award (YFA) program is designed to seek out ideas from non-tenured faculty in order to identify the next generation of researchers working in microsystem technology. The funded researchers will focus on concepts that are innovative, speculative, and high-risk.. (more information)