Excel Methods to Design and Validate in Microelectronics (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor, CMOS) for Biomedical Instrumentation Application.

CMOS microelectronics design has evolved tremendously during the last two decades. The evolution of CMOS devices to short channel designs where the feature size is below 1000 nm brings a great deal of uncertainty in the way the microelectronics design cycle is completed. After the conceptual idea, developing a thinking model to understand the operation of the device requires a good "ballpark" evaluation of transistor sizes, decision making, and assumptions to fulfill the specifications. This design process has iterations to meet specifications that exceed in number of the available degrees of freedom to maneuver the design. Once the thinking model is developed, the simulation validation follows to test if the design has a good possibility of delivering a successful prototype. If the simulation provides a good match between specifications and results, then the layout is developed. This paper shows a useful open science strategy, using the Excel software, to develop CMOS microelectronics hand calculations to verify a design, before performing the computer simulation and layout of CMOS analog integrated circuits. The full methodology is described to develop designs of passive components, as well as CMOS amplifiers. The methods are used in teaching CMOS microelectronics to students of electronic engineering with industrial partner participation. This paper describes an exhaustive example of a low-voltage operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) design which is used to design an instrumentation amplifier. Finally, a test is performed using this instrumentation amplifier to implement a front-end signal conditioning device for CMOS-MEMS biomedical applications.

Electrochemical Instrumentation of an Embedded Potentiostat System (EPS) for a Programmable-System-On-a-Chip.

Under the main features required on portable devices in electrochemical instrumentation is to have a small size, low power consumption, economically affordable and precision in the measurements. This paper describes the development of a programmable Embedded Potentiostat System (EPS) capable of performing electrochemical sensing over system-on-a-chip platforms. Furthermore, the study explains a circuit design and develops some validation of the entire system. The hardware validation is performed by electrochemical experiments such as Double Step Chronoamperometry (DSC), Linear Sweep Voltammetry (LSV) and Cyclic Voltammetry (CV); moreover, a comparison of the experimental signals between a commercial potentiostat and the EPS was done by analysis of errors on the response signal. Results illustrate that the EPS is capable of handling currents in the range of absolute values of 86.44 to 3000 nA and having control voltages in the range of ±2 V. The device can support from 50 to 2000 samples per second. The EPS capabilities were compared with other compact potentiostats. The programmable EPS is an original approach which hugely reduces the hardware complexity and leads the way to create new applications for Point-of-Care or industrial developments with a reusable full electronics module.

Evaluation of Emergency First Response's Competency in Undergraduate College Students: Enhancing Sustainable Medical Education in the Community for Work Occupational Safety.

Worldwide, people's quality of health has been decreasing due to bad eating habits that have generated an increase in diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, overweight, as well as an increase in hours of the daily workday and stress. This situation can generate sudden illness and work accidents where the need to have knowledge in emergency first response (EFR) is necessary for all. Unfortunately, workshops and courses to certify EFR individuals are usually taught only to healthcare professionals. Therefore, to address this need a EFR project has been developed at the Tecnológico de Monterrey (TEC) which consists of a multidisciplinary challenge to train, certify, and evaluate students' competency as "emergency first responders" in medical emergencies and healthcare awareness. This EFR project has been performed for one week, every year since 2015, and constitutes a joint venture among academic departments, faculty, and industrial/government institutions, which work together in multidisciplinary projects, providing a source of innovative proposals. The EFR project at TEC has provided instruction and certification for 966 students between 2015 to 2019 and this study has analyzed results considering a sample size of 197 participants. The combination of exam evaluation, medical emergency skills verification, and project proposal results indicate that most students reach skill levels between 2 and 3 in EFR competency after successfully completing the program, regardless of their year of study or the undergraduate program they are enrolled on. This evaluation emphasizes the compromise of the institution and its students in preparation for new living under sanitary conditions for pandemic conditions such as COVID-19.

Characterization of interdigitated electrode structures for water contaminant detection using a hybrid voltage divider and a vector network analyzer.

Interdigitated capacitive electrode structures have been used to monitor or actuate over organic and electrochemical media in efforts to characterize biochemical properties. This article describes a method to perform a pre-characterization of interdigitated electrode structures using two methods: a hybrid voltage divider (HVD) and a vector network analyzer (VNA). Both methodologies develop some tests under two different conditions: free air and bi-distilled water media. Also, the HVD methodology is used for other two conditions: phosphate buffer with laccase (polyphenoloxidase; EC 1.10.3.2) and contaminated media composed by a mix of phosphate buffer and 3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS). The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a characterization methodology using both, a hybrid voltage divider and VNA T-# network impedance models of the interdigitated capacitive electrode structure that will provide a shunt RC network of particular interest in detecting the amount of contamination existing in the water solution for the media conditions. This methodology should provide us with the best possible sensitivity in monitoring water contaminant media characteristics. The results show that both methods, the hybrid voltage divider and the VNA methodology, are feasible in determining impedance modeling parameters. These parameters can be used to develop electric interrogation procedures and devices such as dielectric characteristics to identify contaminant substances in water solutions.