From the notice

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative proposals in the areas of new synthesis techniques for polymeric materials and nonlinear optical (NLO) materials. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in material synthesis with the ability to scale to quantities relevant for application integration, culminating in the development of a prototype demonstration of a revolutionary NLO material integrated into a functional government-provided electro-optic modulator. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice, or research that pivots on exceptional claims that cannot be technically justified in the proposal. This includes: • Proposals aiming to employ solely inorganic materials without a polymeric component • Proposals aiming to modify/repurpose existing NLO materials resulting in incremental improvements to the state-of-the-art (SoA)