Menlo Micro has been awarded a contract by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). Menlo Micro will develop a first of its kind, high-current advanced circuit breaker for power distribution for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program’s Advanced Technology Innovation Pipeline (ATIP) Program. Menlo Micro was selected from a field of companies competing for the contract through DIU’s rigorous vendor selection process.

Throughout the project, Menlo Micro will provide building blocks to be converted into a hybrid Ideal Switch® architecture to switch up to 1kV_DC/10kA_DC for U.S. Navy electrical systems. Upon project completion, 100A power building blocks will be assembled and tested for future integration into advanced circuit breakers for the DoD.

This breakthrough circuit breaker solution will feature more reliable state-of-the-art performance in a much smaller form factor, compared to traditional circuit breakers. This new circuit breaker solution uses Menlo Micro’s high-power MM9200 SMT Ideal Switch®, combined with a solid-state switch. It will enable high efficiency hot-switch solutions with SWaP that is up to 5X smaller, 4X lighter, and with less complicated external cooling and heatsinking solutions than the old generation solutions based on mechanical switches.