scholarly journals Highly Configurable 100 Channel Recording and Stimulating Integrated Circuit for Biomedical Experiments

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (24) ◽  
pp. 8482
Author(s):  
Piotr Kmon

This paper presents the design results of a 100-channel integrated circuit dedicated to various biomedical experiments requiring both electrical stimulation and recording ability. The main design motivation was to develop an architecture that would comprise not only the recording and stimulation, but would also block allowing to meet different experimental requirements. Therefore, both the controllability and programmability were prime concerns, as well as the main chip parameters uniformity. The recording stage allows one to set their parameters independently from channel to channel, i.e., the frequency bandwidth can be controlled in the (0.3 Hz–1 kHz)–(20 Hz–3 kHz) (slow signal path) or (0.3 Hz–1 kHz)–4.7 kHz (fast signal path) range, while the voltage gain can be set individually either to 43.5 dB or 52 dB. Importantly, thanks to in-pixel circuitry, main system parameters may be controlled individually allowing to mitigate the circuitry components spread, i.e., lower corner frequency can be tuned in the 54 dB range with approximately 5% precision, and the upper corner frequency spread is only 4.2%, while the voltage gain spread is only 0.62%. The current stimulator may also be controlled in the broad range (69 dB) with its current setting precision being no worse than 2.6%. The recording channels’ input-referred noise is equal to 8.5 µVRMS in the 10 Hz–4.7 kHz bandwidth. The single-pixel occupies 0.16 mm2 and consumes 12 µW (recording part) and 22 µW (stimulation blocks).

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 87-92
Author(s):  
Dan E. Dan-Abia ◽  
Akaninyene Obot ◽  
Kufre M. Udofia

The design and analysis of the multistage common emitter (CE) amplifier for improved voltage gain over the single stage CE amplifier is presented in this paper. The design procedure started with the design of a single stage CE amplifier. The design specifications for the CE amplifier were specified. The design of the multistage CE amplifier was done using the designed single stage CE amplifier as the basic configuration. The designed single stage and multistage CE amplifiers were simulated in the linear technology simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis (LT SPICE). The results obtained show that using analytical method a voltage gain of 45 dB was obtained for the single stage and 54 dB was obtained for the multistage respectively, the LT SPICE simulation software presented a result of 44 dB for the single stage and 54 dB for the multistage. The proposed amplifier may find suitable applications in devices operating in the low frequency such as audio signal applications. Furthermore, judging from these results coupling of more stages of the transistor amplifier to obtain greater voltage, current and power gains is recommended.


Author(s):  
Chia-Che Wu ◽  
Cheng-Chun Lee ◽  
G. Z. Cao ◽  
I. Y. Shen

In the last decade, Lead Zirconate Titanate Oxide (PZT) thin-film actuators have received increasing attention because of their high frequency bandwidth, large actuation strength, fast response, and small size. The PZT film thickness is usually less than several microns as opposed to hundreds of microns for bulk PZT patches that are commercially available. As a result, PZT thin-film actuators pose unique vibration issues that do not appear in actuators with bulk PZT. Two major issues affecting actuator performance are the frequency bandwidth and the resonance amplitude. As an electromechanical device, a PZT thin-film actuator’s bandwidth and resonance amplitude depend not only on the lowest natural frequency ωn of the actuator’s mechanical structure but also on the corner frequency ωc of the actuator’s RC-circuit. For PZT thin-film actuators, the small film thickness implies large film capacitance C and small ωc. When the size of the actuator decreases, frequency ωn increases dramatically. As a result, improper design of PZT thin-film actuators could lead to ωc ≪ ωn substantially reducing the actuator bandwidth and the resonance amplitude. This paper is to demonstrate this phenomenon through calibrated experiments. In the experiments, frequency response functions of a fixed-fixed silicon beam with a 1-μm thick PZT film are measured through use of a laser Doppler vibrometer and a spectrum analyzer. The silicon beam has multiple electrodes with a wide range of resistance R and corner frequency ωc. The experimental results confirm that the actuator bandwidth and resonance amplitude are substantially reduced when ωc ≪ ωn.


2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Kmon

Abstract This paper presents techniques introduced to minimize both power and silicon area of the multichannel integrated recording circuits dedicated to biomedical experiments. The proposed methods were employed in multichannel integrated circuit fabricated in CMOS 180nm process and were validated with the use of a wide range of measurements. The results show that both a single recording channel and correction blocks occupy about 0.061 mm2 of the area and consume only 8.5 μW of power. The input referred noise is equal to 4.6 μVRMS. With the use of additional digital circuitry, each of the recording channels may be independently configured. The lower cut-off frequency may be set within the range of 0.1 Hz–700 Hz, while the upper cut-off frequency, depending on the recording mode chosen, can be set either to 3 kHz/13 kHz or may be tuned in the 2 Hz–400 Hz range. The described methods were introduced in the 64-channel integrated circuit. The key aspect of the proposed design is the fact that proposed techniques do not limit functionality of the system and do not deteriorate its overall parameters.


Author(s):  
Edison R. Castillo ◽  
Catherine D. Samson ◽  
Glenn N. Ortiz ◽  
Mark Joseph B. Enojas

<p>Thereare recorded downtime in the current testing processes of microelectronic packages. The available test equipment, the isolation of the power supply modules and the processes of testing must be changed in order to minimize the downtime. This study presents the design and development of a voltage monitoring device made of a 14-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) interfaced through inter-integrated circuit (I2C) for power supply module 6 (PS6). It is built to address the downtime in isolation and testing process of PS6. This setup is able to monitor and display three output voltages operating in 4-12V signals through athin film transistor (TFT) monitor. Tests were conducted for the nominal voltage and current setting scalled the three-point tests. In result, the fault detection and calibration process of PS6 are able to minimize downtimes. The developed voltage monitoring device has an acceptable percentage of 0.04572% which also canbe a replacement for digital multimeters (DMMs) for specific applications to PS6.</p>


2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Han

AbstractImprovement in frequency bandwidth of a packaged diode laser is investigated by the circuit impedance matching. To overcome the structural limitation of the electronic package for high frequencies, employing conventional lumped element impedance matching technique in conjunction with the manipulation of signal path of the package connections showed significant enhancement for 3-dB bandwidth to more than 6 GHz.


Author(s):  
R. M. Anderson

Aluminum-copper-silicon thin films have been considered as an interconnection metallurgy for integrated circuit applications. Various schemes have been proposed to incorporate small percent-ages of silicon into films that typically contain two to five percent copper. We undertook a study of the total effect of silicon on the aluminum copper film as revealed by transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction and ion microprobe techniques as a function of the various deposition methods.X-ray investigations noted a change in solid solution concentration as a function of Si content before and after heat-treatment. The amount of solid solution in the Al increased with heat-treatment for films with ≥2% silicon and decreased for films <2% silicon.


Author(s):  
Kemining W. Yeh ◽  
Richard S. Muller ◽  
Wei-Kuo Wu ◽  
Jack Washburn

Considerable and continuing interest has been shown in the thin film transducer fabrication for surface acoustic waves (SAW) in the past few years. Due to the high degree of miniaturization, compatibility with silicon integrated circuit technology, simplicity and ease of design, this new technology has played an important role in the design of new devices for communications and signal processing. Among the commonly used piezoelectric thin films, ZnO generally yields superior electromechanical properties and is expected to play a leading role in the development of SAW devices.


Author(s):  
S. Khadpe ◽  
R. Faryniak

The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) is an important tool in Thick Film Hybrid Microcircuits Manufacturing because of its large depth of focus and three dimensional capability. This paper discusses some of the important areas in which the SEM is used to monitor process control and component failure modes during the various stages of manufacture of a typical hybrid microcircuit.Figure 1 shows a thick film hybrid microcircuit used in a Motorola Paging Receiver. The circuit consists of thick film resistors and conductors screened and fired on a ceramic (aluminum oxide) substrate. Two integrated circuit dice are bonded to the conductors by means of conductive epoxy and electrical connections from each integrated circuit to the substrate are made by ultrasonically bonding 1 mil aluminum wires from the die pads to appropriate conductor pads on the substrate. In addition to the integrated circuits and the resistors, the circuit includes seven chip capacitors soldered onto the substrate. Some of the important considerations involved in the selection and reliability aspects of the hybrid circuit components are: (a) the quality of the substrate; (b) the surface structure of the thick film conductors; (c) the metallization characteristics of the integrated circuit; and (d) the quality of the wire bond interconnections.


Author(s):  
John F. Walker ◽  
J C Reiner ◽  
C Solenthaler

The high spatial resolution available from TEM can be used with great advantage in the field of microelectronics to identify problems associated with the continually shrinking geometries of integrated circuit technology. In many cases the location of the problem can be the most problematic element of sample preparation. Focused ion beams (FIB) have previously been used to prepare TEM specimens, but not including using the ion beam imaging capabilities to locate a buried feature of interest. Here we describe how a defect has been located using the ability of a FIB to both mill a section and to search for a defect whose precise location is unknown. The defect is known from electrical leakage measurements to be a break in the gate oxide of a field effect transistor. The gate is a square of polycrystalline silicon, approximately 1μm×1μm, on a silicon dioxide barrier which is about 17nm thick. The break in the oxide can occur anywhere within that square and is expected to be less than 100nm in diameter.


Author(s):  
Thomas M. Moore

In the last decade, a variety of characterization techniques based on acoustic phenomena have come into widespread use. Characteristics of matter waves such as their ability to penetrate optically opaque solids and produce image contrast based on acoustic impedance differences have made these techniques attractive to semiconductor and integrated circuit (IC) packaging researchers.These techniques can be divided into two groups. The first group includes techniques primarily applied to IC package inspection which take advantage of the ability of ultrasound to penetrate deeply and nondestructively through optically opaque solids. C-mode Acoustic Microscopy (C-AM) is a recently developed hybrid technique which combines the narrow-band pulse-echo piezotransducers of conventional C-scan recording with the precision scanning and sophisticated signal analysis capabilities normally associated with the high frequency Scanning Acoustic Microscope (SAM). A single piezotransducer is scanned over the sample and both transmits acoustic pulses into the sample and receives acoustic echo signals from the sample.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document