The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will host a Proposers Day in support of Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) HR001123S0036, HOTS program on May 31, 2023 at the Booz Allen Hamilton Auditorium located at 8283 Greensboro Drive, McLean, VA 22102 from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm. Participants must register for the HOTS Proposers Day through the registration website no later than May 22, 2023, 4:00 pm EDT. The purpose of this meeting is to provide information on the HOTS program, promote additional discussion on this topic, address questions from potential proposers, and provide an opportunity for potential proposers to share their capabilities and ideas for teaming arrangements. DARPA anticipates releasing the HOTS BAA HR001123S0036 prior to the Proposers Day.
The goals of the Proposers Day are:
(1) To introduce the science and technology community (industry, academia, and government) to the HOTS program vision and goals;
(2) To facilitate interaction between researchers with capabilities and interests relevant to the HOTS program goals; and
(3) To encourage and promote teaming arrangements among organizations that have the relevant expertise, research facilities and capabilities for executing research and development responsive to the HOTS program goals.
The Proposers Day will include overview presentations by government personnel and opportunities for team building among the participants. This meeting will be held at the Unclassified level.
Many commercial and defense systems, including oil-and-gas, geothermal, automotive, turbine, and hypersonic systems, experience thermal environments beyond the capability of today’s high-performance physical sensors. Such systems must therefore be designed and operated with reduced performance and excessive margins due to uncertain conditions in harsh thermal environments. Physical sensors that can operate in the high temperature environment absent additional thermal management will enable systems to operate closed-loop and monitor state-of-health.
Microelectronic sensors are formed by transducers integrated with signal-conditioning microelectronics. High-bandwidth, large-dynamic-range sensors typically combine high electromechanical sensitivity, limited-bandgap transducers with high gain-bandwidth product, silicon complementary metal-oxidesemiconductor (CMOS) transistor signal-conditioning microelectronics using low-loss integration technology. However, these technologies are constrained by intrinsic material limitations to operate in low-temperature zones (<225 °C1 ambient temperature) due to intrinsic material limitations at elevated temperatures of the high-temperature platforms in which they are deployed (e.g., turbine engines).
The objective of the HOTS program is to develop sensor microelectronics consisting of transducers, signal conditioning microelectronics, and integration that operate with high bandwidth (>1 MHz) and dynamic range (>90 dB) at extreme temperatures (i.e., at least 800 °C). Performance will be validated through the development and demonstration of a pressure sensor module consisting of integrated transducer and signal-conditioning microelectronics. To realize the program objectives, the HOTS technology will:
- Achieve both long-lifetime and large-bandwidth transistors at high temperature
- Achieve a high-sensitivity transducer at high temperature
- Integrate a high-operating temperature sensor without degrading performance
The HOTS program will leverage recent advances in wide-bandgap transistors, demonstrations of thermally robust transducer materials, and insight from heterogeneous integration techniques to overcome the technical challenges and form highly-integrated, thermally-hardened sensors.
DARPA expects that diverse expertise from across academia, small business, national laboratories, and the defense industrial base research community may be applicable to achieving all program goals. Teaming is appropriate when strategic to achieve program outcomes.
