SBIR DPA26BZ02-NV005 (DARPA): Spreaders for Microsystems with Advanced Thermal Resilience (SMART)
U.S. Department of Defense — DARPA
Who can apply
Small Business. Startup
About this opportunity
DARPA SBIR topic — under DoW SBIR 2026 BAA (Solicitation 26.BZ, Release 2) — Accepting submissions 2026-05-27 to 2026-06-24. Objective: To develop passive thermal management technologies for extreme environment and high-power density systems, resulting in a conformal thin-film heat spreader technology with significant improvements compared to conventional copper heat spreaders. Description: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative proposals for the research and development of thin-film heat spreader technology. Current heat spreader solutions use high thermal conductivity (TC) materials like copper (TC: 400 W/m·K) and aluminum nitride (TC: 320 W/m·K). However, these solutions lack the complete set of properties needed to make them both effective at hea...