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Disruptive Manufacturing Technologies (DMT)
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 traveling wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs), which are common in electronic warfare (EW), information warfare (IW), radar, and communication systems. For decades, there has been a desire to replace high-power TWTAs with lower cost solid-state components.
Under the DMT program, the Polystrata™ technology developed under DARPA’s 3-Dimension Micro Electromagnetic Radio Frequency (3-D MERFS) program will be merged with the Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology developed under the Wide Bandgap Semiconductor (WBGS) program to create Hybrid Microwave Integrated Circuits (HyMICs). Within HyMICS, strings of individual GaN transistors will be directly integrated with passives and impedance matching circuits realized in Polystrata™. As a result, the need for expensive and difficult to manufacture Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMIC) will be obviated. This architecture will enable much earlier deployment of novel semiconductor materials (before expensive and time consuming yield improvement efforts), and result in significant cost savings for systems using more typical semiconductor materials.
Phase I, scheduled to end in 2008, will result in a proof-of-concept 20W GaN module implemented with Polystrata™ technology. Phase II, scheduled to end in 2010, will culminate in the demonstration of a form-fit-function 160W GaN amplifier ready for military insertion.