DARPA-SN-27-10

Special Notice Request for Information:

Flexoelectric Futures

DARPA-SN-27-10

November 4, 2026

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Multi X Office 675 North Randolph Street Arlington, VA 22203-2114

Request for Information (RFI) Special Notice DARPA-SN-27-10

Flexoelectric Futures Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Multi X Office (MXO)

OVERVIEW:

Posting Date: November 4, 2026 Responses Due: December 4, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) Technical POC: Dr. David Meyer, MXO Program Manager E-mail: DARPA-SN-27-10@darpa.mil

RFI DESCRIPTION:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Multi X Office (MXO) seeks information to inform possible future research on flexoelectric materials.

The Department of War (DoW) requires sensing and transduction technologies that operate under size, weight, power, communications, and environmental constraints. The intended scope of this RFI is to explore foundational materials, interfaces, metrology, design rules, and device elements that may encode or discriminate local mechanical state through strain-gradient-driven electromechanical response.

Responses may identify how materials and device elements could support future distributed sensing, adaptive transduction, physical-compute device elements, morphological-compute systems, or compliant robotic structures; however, reference to these applications is not required.

The goals of this Request for Information (RFI) include, but are not limited to:

• Surveying the state of the art in flexoelectric, strain-gradient-driven, and related electromechanical materials and devices

• Identifying and distinguishing the intrinsic, interfacial, ionic, defect-mediated, phase-boundary, electrode, and geometry-driven mechanisms that govern observed flexoelectric response

• Identifying material, microstructure, interface, and device architectures that provide high-response, low-loss, compliant, and stable strain-gradient transduction

• Identifying figures of merit, benchmarking methods, and preliminary quantitative estimates that enable credible comparison with piezoelectric, capacitive, triboelectric, soft-sensor, and other relevant approaches

• Identifying device elements that encode or distinguish mechanically relevant conditions, including bend, impact, contact, vibration, slip, fatigue, damage, and load

• Identifying material and device requirements for future distributed sensing, adaptive transduction, physical-compute device elements, morphological-compute systems, and body-level reflex applications

• Identifying the scientific, manufacturing, scaling, integration, environmental, and transition barriers that must be addressed before strain-gradient transduction can become a viable DoW technology platform

Responses to this RFI may inform future program research thrusts, metrics, and performance targets.

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BACKGROUND:

Current piezoelectric transducers provide mature, efficient, and high-bandwidth sensing and actuation.

However, high-performance piezoelectric systems can face tradeoffs among mechanical compliance, usable force or energy conversion, packaging, and integration into large-area, flexible, or geometrically complex structures. Soft electromechanical systems can provide compliance and large deformation but may require separate sensing elements, wiring, electronics, and control hardware.

Flexoelectricity provides a strain-gradient-based transduction pathway that may enable electromechanical function in compliant materials and unconventional geometries. Current flexoelectric materials and devices, however, often face limitations in response amplitude, signal-to-noise ratio, phase lag, hysteresis, leakage, environmental stability, cycle life, reproducibility, and predictive design.

The central technical opportunity is to transform coupled material phenomena, including strain-gradient geometry, interfaces, defects, ionic transport, phase behavior, charge relaxation, and electrode effects, into controllable design variables rather than poorly understood sources of apparent response.

Recent observations in non-crystalline, non-equilibrium dielectric systems suggest that interfaces, defects, and transport pathways may provide underexplored electromechanical opportunities. This RFI seeks information that can determine whether such effects can be converted into reproducible, state-selective material and device capabilities.

REQUESTED INFORMATION:

DARPA seeks innovative insights on flexoelectric materials, interfaces, measurement approaches, and device elements that enable controllable, state-selective strain-gradient transduction. The aim is to determine whether coupled material phenomena, including intrinsic flexoelectricity, interfaces, ionic transport, defects, phase behavior, electrode effects, and strain-gradient geometry, can be understood and engineered into reproducible electromechanical materials and device capabilities.

Responses are welcome from all capable sources including, but not limited to, private or public companies, individuals, universities, university-affiliated research centers, not-for-profit research institutions, and U.S. Government-sponsored laboratories.

Responses must address one or more of the Technical Areas below. Responses addressing multiple Technical Areas should clearly identify the linkages and dependencies among material mechanisms, device architectures, measurement methods, and potential application requirements.

For each Technical Area addressed, respondents are highly encouraged to identify quantifiable metrics that define the current state of the art, threshold performance for practical device relevance, and what revolutionary progress would look like. Responses should provide supporting rationale for why the selected metrics capture meaningful scientific, technical, or operational progress.

Responses that identify a credible path from a fundamental mechanism question to a measurable material or device-level capability are particularly encouraged.

Technical Area 1: Mechanism-Resolved Compliant Flexoelectric Materials

Flexoelectric and strain-gradient-driven electromechanical response may arise from intrinsic material behavior as well as coupled interfacial, ionic, defect-mediated, phase-dependent, electrode, and geometry-driven mechanisms. Current materials and devices often lack the response strength, low-loss, stability, reproducibility, and predictive design rules needed for practical compliant transduction. DARPA seeks information on the following materials, interfaces, metrology, and device-architecture topics:

1. State of the art: Existing flexoelectric, strain-gradient-driven, and related electromechanical materials and devices, including their inherent limitations, response mechanisms, implementation timescales, and driving performance metrics

2. Material pathways: Material systems and architectures that may enable high-response, compliant, and stable strain-gradient transduction, including organic-inorganic hybrid dielectrics, ionically enhanced materials, dielectric-ferroelectric composites, non-crystalline materials, defect-engineered materials, multilayers, porous structures, gradient materials, and strain-gradient-concentrating geometries

3. Mechanism attribution: Measurement, theory, simulation, and calibration approaches that distinguish intrinsic flexoelectricity from interfacial polarization, ionic transport, defect-mediated effects, phase-boundary behavior, electrode effects, and geometry-driven amplification

4. Predictive design rules: Material, microstructure, interface, and electrode design rules that link composition, processing, geometry, and operating conditions to electromechanical response amplitude, bandwidth, phase, loss, hysteresis, leakage, relaxation, drift, compliance, and cycle life

5. Scale-up and integration: Scalable pathways for fabricating, packaging, and integrating compliant flexoelectric materials into robust transduction devices, including environmental stability, fatigue, reproducibility, and manufacturability considerations

Technical Area 2: State-Selective Strain-Gradient Transduction Device Elements

Current mechanical sensors typically report raw strain, pressure, contact, or vibration signals that require external electronics and computation to interpret mechanical state. DARPA seeks information on flexoelectric device elements that use material behavior, microstructure, geometry, interfaces, electrodes, and transport dynamics to encode local mechanical conditions as stable and distinguishable electromechanical outputs.

The focus of this Technical Area is device-level mechanical-state selectivity. Complete physical-compute architectures, robotic controllers, and autonomous systems are not required. For this Technical Area, respondents should address the following topics, as applicable to their material system, device concept, or technical approach:

1. State of the art: Existing device approaches for distinguishing mechanically relevant conditions, including bend, impact, contact, slip, vibration, load, fatigue, damage, and overload together with limitations in signal discrimination, response time, integration burden, durability, or environmental robustness

2. State-selective architectures: Flexoelectric device architectures that produce state-selective output through amplitude, timing, phase, frequency response, relaxation, spatial response, threshold behavior, rate sensitivity, or other electromechanical signatures

3. Mechanical-state distinctions: Material and device mechanisms that distinguish slow bend from impact, stable contact from slip, safe load from overload, localized contact from distributed deformation, transient vibration from sustained loading, or intact material state from damaged or degraded material state

4. Future application relevance: Device-level approaches that support future distributed sensing, adaptive transduction, physical-compute device elements, morphological-compute systems, or body-level reflex applications, while clearly identifying the material or device contribution separate from any external electronics or system-level control architecture

5. Metrics and benchmarking: Figures of merit, benchmarking approaches, and test protocols for evaluating state-selective strain-gradient transduction, including response separability, false-alarm and missed-event rates, signal-to-noise ratio, response and recovery time, cycle life, sensing coverage, calibration burden, and integration requirements

Technical Area 3: Idea Exploration

Technical Area 3 seeks information on the following exploratory topics, as applicable:

1. Key unanswered questions: Scientific, technical, metrology, manufacturing, integration, or scaling questions that must be resolved to determine whether flexoelectric and related strain-gradient transduction can become a viable DoW technology platform

2. Decisive approaches: New material concepts, interfaces, device architectures, metrology methods, models, figures of merit, or experiments that could resolve these questions, distinguish competing mechanisms, or establish credible design rules

3. Enabling capabilities: Relevant capabilities, facilities, datasets, test infrastructure, partnerships, or prior work that could support investigation of the identified questions and validation of potential solutions

The following are not of interest to this RFI:

1. Generic piezoelectric, capacitive, triboelectric, flexible-sensor, or soft-material responses without a clear strain-gradient-transduction distinction

2. Material or device claims without an identified physical mechanism, measurable figure of merit, relevant state-of-the-art comparison, or validation approach

3. Responses centered on complete robotic systems, autonomy architectures, or mission applications without distinct flexoelectric materials, interface, measurement, or device-element innovation

4. Approaches in which external digital processing, microcontrollers, analog-to-digital conversion, or software algorithms perform the claimed mechanical-state discrimination without a material or device-level strain-gradient transduction contribution

5. Incremental improvements to existing sensing or transduction approaches without a credible path to meaningful or transformative performance advantage

External electronics may be used for instrumentation, calibration, data collection, or supervisory control, but should not constitute the primary claimed mechanism for state-selective transduction.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

Responses to this RFI should be submitted no later than the due date and time listed in the overview section.

Unclassified responses to this RFI should be submitted to DARPA-SN-27-10@darpa.mil. NO CLASSIFIED INFORMATION SHOULD BE SENT TO DARPA-SN-27-10@darpa.mil.

Classified responses should be coordinated with DARPA prior to submission. Respondents wishing to provide a classified response should send an unclassified e-mail to DARPA-SN-27-10@darpa.mil with the subject line “Classified Coordination Requested”. Respondents should allow at least three (3) business days for processing requests. NO CLASSIFIED INFORMATION SHOULD BE SENT TO DARPA-SN-27- 10@darpa.mil.

To the maximum extent possible, respondents should submit non-proprietary information. If proprietary information is submitted, it must be appropriately and specifically marked. It is the respondent’s responsibility to clearly define to the Government what is considered proprietary data. Any proprietary information should be clearly labeled as “Proprietary.” DARPA will disclose submission contents only for the purpose of review by DARPA staff, other Government agencies, or DARPA Support Contractors/SETAs.

NOTE: DARPA intends to conduct individual discussions with respondents as necessary to gain a full understanding of the technical and partnership models submitted. DARPA will contact respondents individually via e-mail.

FORMAT INSTRUCTIONS:

Responses to the RFI should be concise. Respondents should submit a single integrated response addressing one or more of the areas described above. DARPA will only review responses submitted as an unprotected Microsoft Word/PowerPoint document or PDF file. Each response must use 11-point font and 1-inch margins on 8.5-inch by 11-inch page size. Responses must adhere to the page limits specified below; however, effective responses that can be provided in fewer pages are encouraged. Any submitted material in excess of these page limits will not be reviewed.

Responses should adhere to the following formatting instructions:

1. Cover page (One page)

a. Title

b. Organization(s)

c. Respondent’s technical and administrative points of contact (names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses)

2. Technical Area(s) (Four pages maximum for each of Technical Areas 1 and 2, and two pages maximum for Technical Area 3. A response addressing all three Technical Areas may include no more than ten technical pages.) For each Technical Area addressed, respondents should provide:

a. A discussion of the capabilities, challenges, or opportunities addressed, including the technical problem and relevant baseline technology and limitations.

b. Theoretical, modeling, simulation, and/or experimental discussion of the underlying physical mechanism

c. Development strategy, especially versus requested metrics

d. Identification of current data, if any

e. Estimated time to availability and risk assessment, including technical, manufacturing, integration, environmental, transition, and other relevant risks

3. References (Two pages)

a. All references to previously published work. If applicable, include a list of Government sponsors of previous or ongoing work and their contact information.

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4. Summary slide(s) (One summary slide per Technical Area)

a. Responses are requested to include a slide(s) that summarizes the main idea and development strategy, visually and succinctly indicating new insights, main objectives, underlying technical mechanisms, fundamental assumptions and limitations, key innovations, expected impact, and/or other unique aspects of the response.

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DARPACONNECT:

Entities who have not worked with DARPA before are encouraged to learn more about DARPAConnect, an initiative established to facilitate collaboration between DARPA and potential performers. The DARPAConnect team offers customized support, resources, and guidance on how to prepare your ideas for high-impact conversations with DARPA program managers. Please visit DARPAConnect.us to access a digital hub of online resources, including a curriculum for self-paced learning, personalized support, and in-person and virtual events. In addition to the self-paced online materials, the DARPAConnect team is able to schedule one-on-one conversations to discuss your specific ideas, questions, and paths to DARPA.

You can use the contact form at DARPAConnect.us or email the DARPAConnect team directly at darpaconnect@darpa.mil to request assistance.

ADMINISTRATIVE:

This announcement contains all information required to submit a response. No additional forms, kits, or other materials are needed. All administrative and technical questions should be directed to DARPA-SN- 27-10@darpa.mil. Please refer to the Special Notice number (DARPA-SN-27-10) in all correspondence.

This RFI is issued solely for information and program planning purposes and does not constitute a formal solicitation for proposals or proposal abstracts; any so sent will be disregarded. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Submission of a response is strictly voluntary and is not required to propose to subsequent Announcements (if any) or Solicitations (if any) on this topic. DARPA will not provide reimbursement for costs incurred in responding to this RFI. Respondents are advised that DARPA is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted under this RFI.

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