Microsystems Technology Office

**MTO Mission** MTO’s mission is to dominate the microsystems ecology militarily and economically. To do this, MTO will 1) pursue scientific disruption, namely **photonic, quantum, and organic circuits**, 2) ecosystem disruption, by establishing a new sustainable **microsystem manufacturing ecosystem**, and 3) market disruption by utilizing the power of commercial scaling with the intelligent leveraging of DoD-only capabilities through **dual-use by design**. **MTO Strategic Thrusts** MTO focuses on three major thrusts, which will both address key challenges, but also build upon and reinforce each other. These thrusts are: 1\. Developing technology to enable fundamentally new ways of creating useful circuits to enable the next generation of microsystems. Specifically: - **Photonic circuits** (PCs). While photonics is not new to MTO, there is still much to explore through using the power of light at the chip-scale. MTO will look 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. MTO is attempting to look at 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. - **Bio/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. MTO is looking 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. 2\. **Microsystems manufacturing ecosystem** is developing the infrastructure needed to bring the needed sustainability to advanced microsystems. MTO is exploring new additive, subtractive, and combination fabrication tools as well as technologies to enable environmentally sustainable manufacturing, technologies to speed up time to market, and foundational ecosystem enhancements with far-reaching impact beyond the new circuits of tomorrow. 3\. **Dual-use by design** is recognition that the DoD must both take advantage of commercial scaling, but also find ways to build superior capability into defense microsystems. MTO will explore new technologies in design, integration, and hardware security.