Fully Integrated Biochip Platforms for Advanced Healthcare

Recent advances in microelectronics and biosensors are enabling developments of innovative biochips for advanced healthcare by providing fully integrated platforms for continuous monitoring of a large set of human disease biomarkers. Continuous monitoring of several human metabolites can be addressed by using fully integrated and minimally invasive devices located in the sub-cutis, typically in the peritoneal region. This extends the techniques of continuous monitoring of glucose currently being pursued with diabetic patients. However, several issues have to be considered in order to succeed in developing fully integrated and minimally invasive implantable devices. These innovative devices require a high-degree of integration, minimal invasive surgery, long-term biocompatibility, security and privacy in data transmission, high reliability, high reproducibility, high specificity, low detection limit and high sensitivity. Recent advances in the field have already proposed possible solutions for several of these issues. The aim of the present paper is to present a broad spectrum of recent results and to propose future directions of development in order to obtain fully implantable systems for the continuous monitoring of the human metabolism in advanced healthcare applications

Overview of carbon-based circuits and systems

This paper presents an overview of the state of the art on carbon-based circuits and systems made up of carbon nanotubes and graphene transistors. A tutorial description of the most important devices and their potential benefits and limitations is given, trying to identify their suitability to implement analog and digital circuits and systems. Main electrical models reported so far for the design of carbon-based field-effect devices are surveyed, and the main sizing parameters required to implement such devices in practical integrated circuits are analyzed. The solutions proposed by cutting-edge integrated circuits and devices are discussed, identifying current trends, challenges and opportunities for the circuits and systems community1

Solid State Circuits Technologies

The evolution of solid-state circuit technology has a long history within a relatively short period of time. This technology has lead to the modern information society that connects us and tools, a large market, and many types of products and applications. The solid-state circuit technology continuously evolves via breakthroughs and improvements every year. This book is devoted to review and present novel approaches for some of the main issues involved in this exciting and vigorous technology. The book is composed of 22 chapters, written by authors coming from 30 different institutions located in 12 different countries throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe. Thus, reflecting the wide international contribution to the book. The broad range of subjects presented in the book offers a general overview of the main issues in modern solid-state circuit technology. Furthermore, the book offers an in depth analysis on specific subjects for specialists. We believe the book is of great scientific and educational value for many readers. I am profoundly indebted to the support provided by all of those involved in the work. First and foremost I would like to acknowledge and thank the authors who worked hard and generously agreed to share their results and knowledge. Second I would like to express my gratitude to the Intech team that invited me to edit the book and give me their full support and a fruitful experience while working together to combine this book

A Review Of Implementing Adc In Rfid Sensor

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)The general considerations to design a sensor interface for passive RFID tags are discussed. This way, power and timing constraints imposed by ISO/IEC 15693 and ISO/IEC 14443 standards to HF RFID tags are explored. A generic multisensor interface is proposed and a survey analysis on the most suitable analog-to-digital converters for passive RFID sensing applications is reported. The most appropriate converter type and architecture are suggested. At the end, a specific sensor interface for carbon nanotube gas sensors is proposed and a brief discussion about its implemented circuits and preliminary results is made.Region Rhone-Alpes (France)CNPq (Brazil)INCT/NAMITEC (Brazil)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq

A Review Of Implementing Adc In Rfid Sensor

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)The general considerations to design a sensor interface for passive RFID tags are discussed. This way, power and timing constraints imposed by ISO/IEC 15693 and ISO/IEC 14443 standards to HF RFID tags are explored. A generic multisensor interface is proposed and a survey analysis on the most suitable analog-to-digital converters for passive RFID sensing applications is reported. The most appropriate converter type and architecture are suggested. At the end, a specific sensor interface for carbon nanotube gas sensors is proposed and a brief discussion about its implemented circuits and preliminary results is made.Region Rhone-Alpes (France)CNPq (Brazil)INCT/NAMITEC (Brazil)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq

An investigation into spike-based neuromorphic approaches for artificial olfactory systems

The implementation of neuromorphic methods has delivered promising results for vision and auditory sensors. These methods focus on mimicking the neuro-biological architecture to generate and process spike-based information with minimal power consumption. With increasing interest in developing low-power and robust chemical sensors, the application of neuromorphic engineering concepts for electronic noses has provided an impetus for research focusing on improving these instruments. While conventional e-noses apply computationally expensive and power-consuming data-processing strategies, neuromorphic olfactory sensors implement the biological olfaction principles found in humans and insects to simplify the handling of multivariate sensory data by generating and processing spike-based information. Over the last decade, research on neuromorphic olfaction has established the capability of these sensors to tackle problems that plague the current e-nose implementations such as drift, response time, portability, power consumption and size. This article brings together the key contributions in neuromorphic olfaction and identifies future research directions to develop near-real-time olfactory sensors that can be implemented for a range of applications such as biosecurity and environmental monitoring. Furthermore, we aim to expose the computational parallels between neuromorphic olfaction and gustation for future research focusing on the correlation of these senses

A Review of Implementing ADC in RFID Sensor

The general considerations to design a sensor interface for passive RFID tags are discussed. This way, power and timing constraints imposed by ISO/IEC 15693 and ISO/IEC 14443 standards to HF RFID tags are explored. A generic multisensor interface is proposed and a survey analysis on the most suitable analog-to-digital converters for passive RFID sensing applications is reported. The most appropriate converter type and architecture are suggested. At the end, a specific sensor interface for carbon nanotube gas sensors is proposed and a brief discussion about its implemented circuits and preliminary results is made

Carbon Nanotube Interconnect Modeling for Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits

In this research, we have studied and analyzed the physical and electrical properties of carbon nanotubes. Based on the reported models for current transport behavior in non-ballistic CNT-FETs, we have built a dynamic model for non-ballistic CNT-FETs. We have also extended the surface potential model of a non-ballistic CNT-FET to a ballistic CNT-FET and developed a current transport model for ballistic CNT-FETs. We have studied the current transport in metallic carbon nanotubes. By considering the electron-electron interactions, we have modified two-dimensional fluid model for electron transport to build a semi-classical one-dimensional fluid model to describe the electron transport in carbon nanotubes, which is regarded as one-dimensional system. Besides its accuracy compared with two-dimensional fluid model and Lüttinger liquid theory, one-dimensional fluid model is simple in mathematical modeling and easier to extend for electronic transport modeling of multi-walled carbon nanotubes and single-walled carbon nanotube bundles as interconnections. Based on our reported one-dimensional fluid model, we have calculated the parameters of the transmission line model for the interconnection wires made of single-walled carbon nanotube, multi-walled carbon nanotube and single-walled carbon nanotube bundle. The parameters calculated from these models show close agreements with experiments and other proposed models. We have also implemented these models to study carbon nanotube for on-chip wire inductors and it application in design of LC voltage-controlled oscillators. By using these CNT-FET models and CNT interconnects models, we have studied the behavior of CNT based integrated circuits, such as the inverter, ring oscillator, energy recovery logic; and faults in CNT based circuits

Towards Single-Chip Nano-Systems

Important scientific discoveries are being propelled by the advent of nano-scale sensors that capture weak signals from their environment and pass them to complex instrumentation interface circuits for signal detection and processing. The highlight of this research is to investigate fabrication technologies to integrate such precision equipment with nano-sensors on a single complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. In this context, several demonstration vehicles are proposed. First, an integration technology suitable for a fully integrated flexible microelectrode array has been proposed. A microelectrode array containing a single temperature sensor has been characterized and the versatility under dry/wet, and relaxed/strained conditions has been verified. On-chip instrumentation amplifier has been utilized to improve the temperature sensitivity of the device. While the flexibility of the array has been confirmed by laminating it on a fixed single cell, future experiments are necessary to confirm application of this device for live cell and tissue measurements. The proposed array can potentially attach itself to the pulsating surface of a single living cell or a network of cells to detect their vital signs

Fabrication of single walled carbon nanotube (SW-CNT) cantilevers for chemical sensing

With the discovery of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), many applications have been implemented based on their unique electronic, mechanical, chemical and optoelectronic properties. One area of applications is in gas sensors for detecting, oxygen, flammable and toxic gases. In our work, the focus is on the fabrication of carbon nanotube (CNT) cantilever sensors for integration with CMOS readout chip which offer increased sensitivity. The higher surface-to-bulk ratio enhances the property and performance of the gas sensor by nanocantilevers. In this work, we present the detection method based on the change in capacitance of the single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) cantilever. Carbon nanotubes are capable of interacting with the gaseous species either directly or indirectly by using a polymer analyte coated on its surface. The capacitance variation technique of measuring cantilever deflection was used to measure the bending rate. The capacitance between the cantilever and the fixed electrode varies as a function of the magnitude of the bending of the cantilever which is in turn proportional to the concentration of the gas species in the surrounding environment. To measure the variation in the capacitance value, the CNT cantilever beam is considered as one of the electrodes of the capacitor and the metal film as the other. The air between the plates acts as the dielectric material. Simulations including both ANSYS for nanocantilevers and SPICE for CMOS readout chip and experimental results are presented in this research. Integration and packaging issues are also discussed in our research