A 15-μW 105-dB 1.8-V_pp Potentiostatic Delta-Sigma Modulator for Wearable Electrochemical Transducers in 65-nm CMOS Technology

Abstract

Wearable electrochemical sensors represent a point of convergence between lab-on-a-chip technologies, advanced microelectronics and connected intelligence. These three pillars establish data flow from analytes present in body fluids, to the Cloud infrastructures towards next-generation personal healthcare and wellness. The design of electrode-embedded interfacing instrumentation in advanced CMOS technology nodes offer a number of challenges spanning from ultra-low power operation, small footprint, sufficient general purpose operability, and compatibility with advanced CMOS technology nodes. This paper presents a low-power frontend with extended amperometric dynamic range and wide potentiostatic range for electrochemical transducers with Delta-Sigma () digital output. The second-order single-bit continuoustime modulator architecture reuses the electrochemical cell dynamic characteristics for quantization noise shaping, while the differential potentiostat enables 1.8 V pp of control range under single 1.2-V supply. The proposed frontend has been integrated in TSMC 65-nm CMOS technology occupying 0.07 mm 2. From electrical and electrochemical tests, the micro potentiostat achieves a Signal-to-Distortion-and-Noise of 80 dB with 15-µW power consumption and a combined multi-scale dynamic range of 105 dB.

A Potentiostat Readout Circuit with a Low-Noise and Mismatch-Tolerant Current Mirror Using Chopper Stabilization and Dynamic Element Matching for Electrochemical Sensors

“…Table 2 summarizes the performances of the proposed potentiostat readout circuit with those of previous studies [4,16,17,[22][23][24]. The simulation results of this circuit achieve the wide input range, low noise, and mismatch-tolerant characteristics.…”