Teledyne wins $18.8million DARPA contract

Teledyne Technologies Incorporated today announced that its subsidiary, Teledyne Scientific & Imaging, LLC, was awarded a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Microsystems Technology Office to develop terahertz electronics devices and integrated circuits. Under DARPA’s Terahertz Electronics (THz) program, TS&I will pursue revolutionary advances in transistor technology, circuit design and circuit packaging to demonstrate receiver and transmitter blocks operating at frequencies greater than 1.0 THz. The initial Phase 1 contract is valued at $8.3 million over a 24 month period. If all contract Phases proceed, the total contract value would be $18.8 million for work performed through 2014. Circuits will be designed and fabricated using TS&I’s high performance Indium Phosphide heterojuction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology. Transistor bandwidths will be extended to THz frequencies by scaling transistor dimensions to less than 100 nm and implementing innovative fabrication processes. A silicon-micromachining process will be developed for forming batch manufactured waveguide blocks for circuit integration. The suite of technologies developed under the program will benefit a large class of radio frequency (RF) and mixed-signal circuits for Department of Defense applications. TS&I has put together a world-class team consisting of the leading research groups from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of California at San Diego and Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems.