# Functional Materials and Devices

**R-2A activity** of project MSL-01 — MATERIALS PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY  
**Program element:** 0602025E — Making, Maintaining, Supply CHAIN AND Logistics  
**Component:** Defense-Wide · **Budget Activity:** 2  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602025E/MSL-01/a0  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602025E/MSL-01

## Summary

This activity requests $41.2M in FY2027, 31% of project MSL-01, down 26% on FY2026. The R-2A exhibit describes it across FY2026–FY2027, including what the FY2027 money is planned to buy.

## What the FY2027 request buys

**FY2027 planned work.** - Perform a coupled optimization demonstration between high-throughput material testing and design optimization frameworks balancing performance, cost, and sustainability. - Establish a proof-of-concept manufacturing demonstration for a continuous material shape optimized component. - Initiate incorporation of enhanced quantum metamaterials in multifunctional nanoelectronic devices for applications to quantum computing, sensing, and signal processing. - Initiate scalable wafer-level fabrication and application-specific development of quantum metamaterial-based nanoelectronic devices. - Conduct out-of-plane liquid mirror hardware demonstration in a particular aperture size scale range and begin advancing designs from laboratory setting to on-sky demonstrations. - Develop detailed design and complete hardware-informed critical design review for a larger scale liquid mirror telescope system that will be capable of astronomical and Space Situational Awareness (SSA) observations without spin-stabilization. - Scale up studies of cell designs using materials with demonstrated high energy displacement thresholds and self-healing, annealing techniques. - Perform proof-of-concept demonstrations of quantum sensing of neutrinos with greatly increased sensitivity compared to currently used neutrino detection methods.

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** The FY 2027 decrease reflects a shift from design and development to system demonstration.

## Before the request year

**FY2026 plans — current year.** - Perform full test and design system demonstrations on material testing platforms and design optimization routines. - Screen new materials driven by design optimization routines and incorporate newly measured properties into design processes in real time. - Demonstrate and prepare manufacturing plans for continuous material shape optimized components. - Design and fabricate functional quantum metamaterial-based nanoelectronic devices for applications in quantum sensing, computing and communications. - Validate and benchmark enhanced quantum effects in metamaterials used in nanoelectronic devices for applications in quantum sensing, computing and communications. - Experimentally validate feasibility of scaling up liquid mirror design and all required component technologies in a specific meter effective aperture size scale range. - Develop detailed design and complete hardware-informed critical design review for a liquid mirror telescope system in a laboratory environment. - Develop atomically-referenced, tunable, narrow-linewidth sources of terahertz radiation to enable calibration-free and matched transmitter-receiver systems. - Develop wafer-scale atomic vapor cells with the requisite homogeneity, manufacturability, and optical quality to enable higher performance and more robust electrometry. - Test high energy displacement threshold materials capable of converting radiation into energy over an extended lifetime. - Implement embedded sensors on a combustor system, a key component of jet engines. - Engineer phononic structures to enable quantum sensing of interaction of subatomic particles (i.e. neutrinos) with atoms in a material. - Explore novel chemical structures that enable the controlled tunability of energetic materials.

## Funding

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2026 | Enacted | 55.6 |
| FY2027 | Request | 41.2 |

> Prior, current and budget year only — an R-2A activity carries no five-year plan. It sums exactly into its project in the request year and not necessarily in any other.

## Other activities in project MSL-01

- [Materials for Extreme Environments](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602025E/MSL-01/a1) — FY2027 20.1
- [Burn n' Go](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602025E/MSL-01/a2) — FY2027 18.7
- [Carbon Crunch](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602025E/MSL-01/a3) — FY2027 16.2
- [Making, Maintaining, Supply Chains and Logistics Studies and Concepts](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602025E/MSL-01/a7) — FY2027 13.7
- [Chemical Processing for Force Protection](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602025E/MSL-01/a4) — FY2027 12.0
- [Grainy Day](https://hitchintel.com/programs/0602025E/MSL-01/a5) — FY2027 10.5
- Reconfigurable Systems — FY2027 0.9

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Office of the Secretary of Defense RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibit R-2A, PE 0602025E project MSL-01 (PB PB2027). Narrative is the government's own text.
- **No marks, no contractors at this grain** — congressional marks land on the program element and R-3 performers on the project.
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_activity`.

*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. Budget figures are requests/estimates, not obligations.*