Modern biosensors play a critical role in healthcare and have a quickly growing commercial market. Compared to traditional optical-based sensing, electrochemical biosensors are attractive due to superior performance in response time, cost, complexity and potential for miniaturization. To address the shortcomings of traditional benchtop electrochemical instruments, in recent years, many complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) instrumentation circuits have been reported for electrochemical biosensors. This paper provides a review and analysis of CMOS electrochemical instrumentation circuits. First, important concepts in electrochemical sensing are presented from an instrumentation point of view. Then, electrochemical instrumentation circuits are organized into functional classes, and reported CMOS circuits are reviewed and analyzed to illuminate design options and performance tradeoffs. Finally, recent trends and challenges toward on-CMOS sensor integration that could enable highly miniaturized electrochemical biosensor microsystems are discussed. The information in the paper can guide next generation electrochemical sensor design.

This paper introduces a CMOS–microfluidics integration scheme for electrochemical microsystems. A CMOS chip was embedded into a micro-machined silicon carrier. By leveling the CMOS chip and carrier surface to within 100 nm, an expanded obstacle-free surface suitable for photolithography was achieved. Thin film metal planar interconnects were microfabricated to bridge CMOS pads to the perimeter of the carrier, leaving a flat and smooth surface for integrating microfluidic structures. A model device containing SU-8 microfluidic mixers and detection channels crossing over microelectrodes on a CMOS integrated circuit was constructed using the chip-carrier assembly scheme. Functional integrity of microfluidic structures and on-CMOS electrodes was verified by a simultaneous sample dilution and electrochemical detection experiment within multi-channel microfluidics. This lab-on-CMOS integration process is capable of high packing density, is suitable for wafer-level batch production, and opens new opportunities to combine the performance benefits of on-CMOS sensors with lab-on-chip platforms.

This paper describes an area and power-efficient VLSI approach for implementing the discrete wavelet transform on streaming multielectrode neurophysiological data in real time. The VLSI implementation is based on the lifting scheme for wavelet computation using the symmlet4 basis with quantized coefficients and integer fixed-point data precision to minimize hardware demands. The proposed design is driven by the need to compress neural signals recorded with high-density microelectrode arrays implanted in the cortex prior to data telemetry. Our results indicate that signal integrity is not compromised by quantization down to 5-bit filter coefficient and 10-bit data precision at intermediate stages. Furthermore, results from analog simulation and modeling show that a hardware-minimized computational core executing filter steps sequentially is advantageous over the pipeline approach commonly used in DWT implementations. The design is compared to that of a B-spline approach that minimizes the number of multipliers at the expense of increasing the number of adders. The performance demonstrates that in vivo real-time DWT computation is feasible prior to data telemetry, permitting large savings in bandwidth requirements and communication costs given the severe limitations on size, energy consumption and power dissipation of an implantable device.

Protein-based bioelectrochemical interfaces offer great potential for rapid detection, continuous use, and miniaturized sensor arrays. This paper introduces a microsystem platform that enables multiple bioelectrochemical interfaces to be interrogated simultaneously by an onchip amperometric readout system. A post-complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication procedure is described that permits the formation of planar electrode arrays and self assembly of biosensor interfaces on the electrodes. The onchip, 0.5-mum CMOS readout electronics include a compact potentiostat that supports a very broad range of input currents-6 pA to 10 muA-to accommodate diverse biosensor interfaces. The 2.3 times 2.2-mm chip operates from a 5-V supply at 0.6 mA. A prototype electrochemical sensor platform, including an onchip potentiostat and miniaturized biosensor array, was characterized by using cyclic voltammetry. The linear relationship between the oxidization peak values and the concentrations of target analytes in the solution verifies functionality of the system and demonstrates the potential for future implementations of this platform in high sensitivity, low cost, and onchip protein-based sensor arrays.

This paper presents an electrochemical gas sensor array system for health and safety monitoring. The system incorporates a custom room temperature ionic-liquid gas sensor array, a custom multimode electrochemical sensor readout board, and a commercial low power microcontroller board. Sensors for multiple gas targets were implemented in a miniaturized 2 × 2 array where each sensor consumes <;3.2 μW and occupies a sensing area volume of 350 mm3. A novel resource-sharing circuit architecture tailored to the gas sensor array was utilized to significantly decrease power, cost, and size. The system supports multiple electrochemical measurement modes to provide orthogonal data to in-module sensor array algorithms for better prediction accuracy. The system achieves a resolution as high as 0.01 vol% in amperometry mode and 0.06 vol% in ac impedance mode for oxygen as an example target gas.