Documents / Official release
This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, DIA-08-0911-016, is dated 14 December 2009. It was prepared by the Defense Warning Office's Acquisition Support Division at the Defense Intelligence Agency and is one of a series of FY 2009 advanced technology reports under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. It is a primer on programmable matter and smart materials such as quantum dots, metamaterials and liquid crystals, and on how they could manage heat and energy and provide camouflage on spacecraft. It concludes that the possible gains would be significant and well worth pursuing.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 12/14/09, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD describes “programmable matter” as smart materials whose properties can be changed on command, potentially allowing spacecraft components to change function through software updates rather than physical repair or replacement. The report suggests that such materials could someday enable adjustable sensors, smart windows, heat control, energy collection, active camouflage, and systems that switch between different functions, making spacecraft more flexible and adaptable. At the same time, it presents the idea as highly speculative and emphasizes major technical obstacles, including manufacturing at extremely small scales, shielding against radiation and electromagnetic interference, managing temperature effects, reducing component failures, and preventing hacking or malicious control. Overall, the document presents programmable matter as a promising long-term concept over the next 50 years, while judging that simpler near-term uses such as smart windows and energy-saving surface materials are far more realistic than the more ambitious aerospace applications.
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Four Kinds of Atoms
All matter is made of atoms and derives its properties, in part, from the fact that atoms
are discrete objects yet are so small and so close together that light waves cannot "see"
them individually. By extension, neither can electric and magnetic fields. To a photon,
or to a large electrical current, matter appears to be made up of continuous substances
rather than discrete building blocks. This fact is critically important in understanding the
optical, electrical, and even thermal properties of materials. Equally important are the
discoveries of recent decades, showing at least four different kinds of "atoms" that
meet this same general description.
NATURAL ATOMS
Natural atoms are the 92 elements of the periodic table. Actually there are more, but
the rest have unstable nuclei that will eventually fly apart Into smaller atoms and loose
subatomic particles that can damage the materials around them. For engineering
purposes, this makes them unreliable building blocks.
However, 92 building blocks allow for a staggering number of combinations, and all the
materials with which we are familiar-natural ones like coal and diamonds, ancient ones
like bronze and glass, and modern ones like silicon carbide and gallium arsenide-are
merely "Tinkertoy" sculptures of these natural atoms.
QUANTUM DOTS
A quantum dot is a very small grouping of tightly confined electrons whose collective
behavior resembles that of a natural atom. For this reason, quantum dots are
sometimes known as "artificial atoms."
To describe how this trick is accomplished, it is first necessary to talk about electrons
and how they behave. Most materials are either conductors, which permit the free flow
of electrons, or insulators, which resist it. Semiconductors are insulators that are
capable of conducting electrons above a certain threshold energy-a useful trick that
makes integrated circuits and other electronics possible. The most familiar
semiconductor is silicon, which is used to make the vast majority of microchips found in
tod;;iy's consumer ;;ind industri;;il electronics. Aecl;'l~1se silicon's n;;itive Q){ide, SiO?, is the
main component of sand and rocks, it is readily available and relatively inexpensive. In
addition, when melted, purified, and hardened into sheets, silicon dioxide serves as one
of our familiar insulators and building materials: glass. Unlike most other
semiconductors, silicon is also nontoxic.
The electrical properties of a semiconductor like silicon are of course fixed by the laws
of physics. Atoms hold electrons in shells that increase in size, capacity, and potential
energy the farther they are from the nucleus. "Valence" electrons are found in full (or
nearly full) shells, where there are few empty spaces through which electrons can
move. These electrons tend to stay at home, so their levels exhibit a large electrical
resistance and do not permit electricity to flow. "Conduction" electrons are found in
shells that are more than half-empty and have lots of open space, enabling electrons to
travel freely through them and move easily from one atom to another. Between these
layers is a "band gap" of forbidden energies. Here, there exist no electrons at all-ever.
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 20 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.