AAWSAP DIRD, Aerospace Applications of Programmable Matter, December 2009

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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Figure 1. Energy Levels of a Metal and a Semiconductor. In a metal, many electrons reside in the conduction
band and can be pushed to neighboring atoms with only a tiny addition of thermal or electrical energy. In a
semiconductor, enough energy must first be added to excite the electron out of the valence band, across the band
gap, and into the conduction band. Thus, to conduct electricity, semiconductors require much higher voltages and
temperatures than do metals.
Electrons below the band gap of a semiconductor behave as though they were in an
insulator, while electrons above the band gap behave as though they were in a
conductor. They flow easily and can be used to store or transport energy and
information.
The difference between a metal and an insulator is that the outermost electron shell of
a metal atom is more than half-empty. It has lots of conduction electrons and lots of
room for them to move around. An insulating material, such as sulfur, has an outer
shell that is almost completely filled. All its electrons are valence electrons
homebodies that do not like to travel. Semiconductors have outer shells that are
approximately half-filled . With the input of energy, their electrons can jump to a higher
level where they find open space to travel through. Conduction electrons can also be
"donated" by neighboring atoms.
A "quantum dot" is simply a very small structure-usually on the order of 5-20
nanometers-that contains a modest number of conduction electrons, which it confines
in all three dimensions and prevents from leaving the structure. In addition, because
the Heisenberg uncertainty principle requires position uncertainty to increase when
particle momentum is restricted, the trapped electrons are unable to hold a well-defined
position and instead behave as standing waves that resemble the orbitals of, and
exhibit many of the same properties as, a natural atom.
However, there are two major differences between a quantum dot and a natural atom.
First, there are far more than 92 possible configurations-an infinite number, in fact
for the confined electrons. Thus, with quantum dots it is possible to create designer
atoms with properties that simply do not occur on the periodic table. If we want to, we
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