Abstract
One key obstacle in employing silicon integrated circuits in flexible implants is ensuring a long-term operation of the chip within the wet corrosive environment of the body. For this reason, throughout the years, various biocompatible insulating materials have been proposed, yet, evaluating their long-term encapsulation performance on representative silicon samples still remains to be the main challenge. For this aim, in this work, a sensitive platform is introduced that can track the integrity of the chip against water and ion ingress. This platform is developed to be used for long-term monitoring of chip integrity and study of encapsulation layers in wet environments. The platform comprises a sensing array and a measurement engine and operates by tracking the changes in the inter-layer dielectric resistance within the chip. The proposed system uses a novel charge/discharge-based time-mode resistance sensor that can be implemented using simple yet highly robust circuitry. The sensor array is implemented together with the measurement engine in a standard 0.18 µm 6-metal CMOS process. For chip validation, dry and wet measurements in saline are presented in this paper.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 18 Oct 2019 |
Event | Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference 2019 - Nara, Japan Duration: 17 Oct 2019 → 19 Oct 2019 https://biocas2019.org/ |
Conference
Conference | Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference 2019 |
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Abbreviated title | BioCAS 2019 |
Country/Territory | Japan |
City | Nara |
Period | 17/10/19 → 19/10/19 |
Internet address |
Keywords
- charge-discharge
- Chip integrity
- encapsulation
- flexible implants
- monitoring
- reliability.
- time-mode operation