A 64-channel readout ASIC for nanowire biosensor array with electrical calibration scheme

A 1.8-mW, 18.5-mm² 64-channel current readout ASIC was implemented in 0.18-μm CMOS together with a new calibration scheme for silicon nanowire biosensor arrays. The ASIC consists of 64 channels of dedicated readout and conditioning circuits which incorporate correlated double sampling scheme to reduce the effect of 1/f noise and offset from the analog front-end. The ASIC provides a 10-bit digital output with a sampling rate of 300 S/s whilst achieving a minimum resolution of 7 pA_rms. A new electrical calibration method was introduced to mitigate the issue of large variations in the nano-scale sensor device parameters and optimize the sensor sensitivity. The experimental results show that the proposed calibration technique improved the sensitivity by 2 to 10 times and reduced the variation between dataset by 9 times.