A 97-Channel Read-Out ASIC for an Electrophysiological Mapping Catheter With an Optical Link.

Electrophysiological (EP) mapping catheters are medical equipment, which are widely used to diagnose and treat atrial fibrillation. The electrophysiology signals are sensed by the catheter's electrodes, for which a large electrode count becomes more and more essential because of the demand for a higher local resolution. A drawback of the large electrode count is the effort to pass through and to integrate the wires inside the catheter shaft. To overcome with this issue, this article describes the realization of an EP ASIC, which is placed close to the 97 electrodes and to perform an in-tip digitization. Thanks to an integrated optical link, only a single fiber is required to connect the catheter tip to an externally located electro-optical unit and thus shrinking the shaft volume to a minimum. The fiber is used to guide light from the electro-optical unit to the catheter tip and illuminate a blue LED, which is located close to the EP ASIC and acts as a photovoltaic cell. The EP ASIC is designed to use the LED as power source and a data transceiver while performing signal conditioning and digitization of the EP signals at the same time. The EP signals are captured with the ASIC's multi-channel read-out circuit consisting of 97 fully differential preamplifiers and additional filter stages. A switch network sequentially selects one single channel for further amplification and digitization of the EP signal. The read-out circuit is designed to process signals in the range of 500 µVpp to 20 mVpp with a bandwidth of 5 Hz to 100 Hz.

Flexible Ultrathin Chip-Film Patch for Electronic Component Integration and Encapsulation using Atomic Layer-Deposited Al2O3-TiO2 Nanolaminates.

Plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) is utilized to improve the barrier properties of an organic chip-film patch (CFP) when it is used as an implant to prevent moisture and ions from migrating into the embedded electronic circuits. For this purpose, surface condition and material properties of eight modifications of Al2O3-TiO2 nanolaminates sequentially deposited on polyimide PI-2611 films are evaluated in detail. The effect of stress-induced warpage of the deposited Al2O3-TiO2 on the wafer level is calculated with the Stoney equation and reveals higher tensile stress values while increasing the thickness of Al2O3-TiO2 nanolaminates from 20 up to 80 nm. Contact angle measurement and atomic force microscopy are used to investigate the surface energy and wettability, as well as the surface morphology of polyimide-Al2O3-TiO2 interfaces. We show that plasma treatment of pristine polyimide leads to an enhanced adhesion force of the PEAL-deposited layer by a factor of 1.3. The water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) is determined by exposing the coated polyimide films to 85% humidity and 23 °C and yields down to 1.58 × 10-3 g(H2O)/(m2 d). The data obtained are compared with alternative coating processes using the polymers parylene-C and benzocyclobutene (BCB). The latter shows higher WVTR values of 1.2 × 10-1 and 1.7 × 10-1 g(H2O)/(m2 d) compared to the PEALD-PI-2611 systems, indicating lower barrier properties. Two Al2O3-TiO2 modifications with low WVTR values have been chosen for encapsulating the CFP substrates and exposing them in a long-time experiment to chemical and mechanical loads in a chamber filled with phosphate-buffered saline at 37 °C, pH 7.3, and a cyclically applied pressure of 160 mbar (∼120 mm Hg). The electrical leakage behavior of the CFP systems is measured and reveals reliable electrical long-term stability far beyond 11 months, highlighting the great potential of PEALD-encapsulated CFPs.

High-gain, low-voltage unipolar logic circuits based on nanoscale flexible organic thin-film transistors with small signal delays.

One of the circuit topologies for the implementation of unipolar integrated circuits (circuits that use either p-channel or n-channel transistors, but not both) is the zero-VGS architecture. Zero-VGS circuits often provide excellent static performance (large small-signal gain and large noise margins), but they suffer from the large signal delay imposed by the load transistor. To address this limitation, we have used electron-beam lithography to fabricate zero-VGS circuits based on organic transistors with channel lengths as small as 120 nm on flexible polymeric substrates. For a supply voltage of 3 V, these circuits have characteristic signal-delay time constants of 14 ns for the low-to-high transition and 560 ns for the high-to-low transition of the circuit's output voltage. These signal delays represent the best dynamic performance reported to date for organic transistor-based zero-VGS circuits. The signal-delay time constant of 14 ns is also the smallest signal delay reported to date for flexible organic transistors.

A 96-Channel Electrophysiology Catheter with Integrated Read-Out ASIC and Optical Link.

This paper describes a realization of an electrophysiology (EP) catheter with 96 electrodes which requires no electrical wiring to the outside by relying on an optical link for both power supply and data communication. The catheter tip is constructed from a liquid crystal polymer (LCP) material. It features 96 gold electrodes, which are uniformly arranged along an expandable basket. An integrated ASIC amplifies, filters and digitizes the EP signals and establishes communication to a data processing unit outside the patient's body. The optical interface consists of a conventional multi-mode fiber and a single blue LED inside the catheter. The external unit used to generate optical power, establish communication and perform data post-processing comprises a laser module, optics, and electrical components. The catheter is designed to capture EP signals in the range of 600 µVpp to 20 mVpp in a frequency range between 8 Hz and 120 Hz.

Flexible low-voltage high-frequency organic thin-film transistors.

The primary driver for the development of organic thin-film transistors (TFTs) over the past few decades has been the prospect of electronics applications on unconventional substrates requiring low-temperature processing. A key requirement for many such applications is high-frequency switching or amplification at the low operating voltages provided by lithium-ion batteries (~3 V). To date, however, most organic-TFT technologies show limited dynamic performance unless high operating voltages are applied to mitigate high contact resistances and large parasitic capacitances. Here, we present flexible low-voltage organic TFTs with record static and dynamic performance, including contact resistance as small as 10 Ω·cm, on/off current ratios as large as 1010, subthreshold swing as small as 59 mV/decade, signal delays below 80 ns in inverters and ring oscillators, and transit frequencies as high as 21 MHz, all while using an inverted coplanar TFT structure that can be readily adapted to industry-standard lithographic techniques.

Small contact resistance and high-frequency operation of flexible low-voltage inverted coplanar organic transistors.

The contact resistance in organic thin-film transistors (TFTs) is the limiting factor in the development of high-frequency organic TFTs. In devices fabricated in the inverted (bottom-gate) device architecture, staggered (top-contact) organic TFTs have usually shown or are predicted to show lower contact resistance than coplanar (bottom-contact) organic TFTs. However, through comparison of organic TFTs with different gate-dielectric thicknesses based on the small-molecule organic semiconductor 2,9-diphenyl-dinaphtho[2,3-b:2',3'-f]thieno[3,2-b]thiophene, we show the potential for bottom-contact TFTs to have lower contact resistance than top-contact TFTs, provided the gate dielectric is sufficiently thin and an interface layer such as pentafluorobenzenethiol is used to treat the surface of the source and drain contacts. We demonstrate bottom-contact TFTs fabricated on flexible plastic substrates with record-low contact resistance (29 Ωcm), record subthreshold swing (62 mV/decade), and signal-propagation delays in 11-stage unipolar ring oscillators as short as 138 ns per stage, all at operating voltages of about 3 V.

Flexible low-voltage organic complementary circuits: finding the optimum combination of semiconductors and monolayer gate dielectrics.

Low-voltage p-channel and n-channel organic transistors with channel lengths down to 0.5 µm using four small-molecule semiconductors and ultra-thin dielectrics based on two different phosphonic acid monolayers are fabricated on plastic substrates and studied in terms of effective mobility, intrinsic mobility and contact resistance. For the optimum materials combination, flexible complementary circuits have signal delays of 3.1 µs at 5 V.

Bridging the gap between optical fibers and silicon photonic integrated circuits.

We present a rigorous approach for designing a highly efficient coupling between single mode optical fibers and silicon nanophotonic waveguides based on diffractive gratings. The structures are fabricated on standard SOI wafers in a cost-effective CMOS process flow. The measured coupling efficiency reaches -1.08 dB and a record value of -0.62 dB in the 1550 nm telecommunication window using a uniform and a nonuniform grating, respectively, with a 1 dB-bandwidth larger than 40 nm.

Contact resistance and megahertz operation of aggressively scaled organic transistors.

Bottom-gate, top-contact organic thin-film transistors (TFTs) with excellent static characteristics (on/off ratio: 10(7) ; intrinsic mobility: 3 cm(2) (V s)(-1) ) and fast unipolar ring oscillators (signal delay as short as 230 ns per stage) are fabricated. The significant contribution of the transfer length to the relation between channel length, contact length, contact resistance, effective mobility, and cutoff frequency of the TFTs is theoretically and experimentally analyzed.

Thin Film on CMOS Active Pixel Sensor for Space Applications.

A 664 x 664 element Active Pixel image Sensor (APS) with integrated analog signal processing, full frame synchronous shutter and random access for applications in star sensors is presented and discussed. A thick vertical diode array in Thin Film on CMOS (TFC) technology is explored to achieve radiation hardness and maximum fill factor.