DARPA News May 12, 2023
The performance of many of the defense and industrial systems that rely on sensors experience harsh environments beyond the capability of today’s high-performance physical sensors, they are limited by the uncertainty of their thermal environments. Today, sensors that can withstand thermally harsh conditions are limited to low-sensitivity transducers located in hot zones coupled via noisy electrical connections to remote, temperature-constrained, silicon signal-conditioning microelectronics in cold zones. The resulting integrated sensors lack the combination of frequency bandwidth and dynamic range essential for high-temperature missions. If we can design, integrate, and demonstrate high-performance physical sensors that can operate in high-temperature environments, we can advance toward systems that perform at the edge of their capability instead of the limits of uncertainty. DARPA’s new High Operational Temperature Sensors (HOTS) program will work toward developing microelectronic sensor technologies capable of high-bandwidth, high-dynamic-range sensing at extreme temperatures. Combinations of emerging materials, fabrication techniques, and integration technologies that inform new types of transistors and transducers, are among the potential approaches the HOTS program hopes to demonstrate as a sensor module. HOTS will hold a Proposers Day on May 31, 2023. Further program details will be available in a forthcoming Broad Agency Announcement… read more.