Wafer-scale low-loss hyperbolic optical material

STTR topic OSW27TZ02-NV001 (U.S. Department of Defense – Office of the Secretary of Defense), Phase I and II. Open to U.S. small businesses; STTR projects partner with a U.S. research institution. Opens: December 2, 2026. Closes: January 6, 2027. Conventional optical systems are limited by diffraction, which sets the smallest features they can pattern, image, or confine to roughly the wavelength of the light used. A class of strongly anisotropic, or "hyperbolic," optical materials can confine and route light far below this limit, enabling a family of compact, low size-weight-and-power photonic components of direct interest to OUSW (R&E). Hyperbolic behavior has historically been realized in artificial metamaterials, which are optically lossy, and difficult to fabricate and scale. Certain naturally occurring crystals exhibit the same behavior with far lower loss, but the available examples operate only in the infrared and have been produced only as small, research-grade crystals by batch methods incompatible with standard microfabrication. There is presently no commercial source of wafer-scale, low-loss hyperbolic material that operates at visible and telecommunication wavelengths in a form compatible with standard semiconductor fabrication, and it is important for the Air Force to establish a domestic supply source for such a material. Official solicitation: https://www.dodsbirsttr.mil/topics-app/