A Scalable ISFET Sensing and Memory Array With Sensor Auto-Calibration for On-Chip Real-Time DNA Detection

• Published in: IEEE transactions on biomedical circuits and systems Vol. 12; no. 2; pp. 390 - 401
• Main Authors: Moser, Nicolas, Rodriguez-Manzano, Jesus, Lande, Tor Sverre, Georgiou, Pantelis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01-04-2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
• Subjects: Calibration; Circuits; CMOS; CMOS sensor; Computer memory; Data acquisition; Deoxyribonucleic acid; Detection; DNA; DNA - analysis; DNA detection; Equipment Design; Field effect transistors; Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; in-pixel quantisation; Ion concentration; Ion detectors; ISFET; Lab-on-a-chip; Lab-On-A-Chip Devices; Logic gates; memory array; Memory cells; Nucleic Acid Amplification Techniques - instrumentation; offset cancellation; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis - instrumentation; pH effects; pH sensor; Phages; Pixels; Plugs; Power management; Real time; Semiconductor devices; Semiconductors; sensor array; Sensor arrays; Temperature effects; Temperature sensors; Transistors; Transistors, Electronic
• ISSN: 1932-4545; 1940-9990
• DOI: 10.1109/TBCAS.2017.2789161

This paper presents a novel CMOS-based system-onchip with a 78 × 56 ion-sensitive field-effect transistor array using in-pixel quantization and compensation of sensor nonidealities. The pixel integrates sensing circuitry and memory cells to encode the ion concentration in time and store a calibration value per pixel. Temperature sensing pixels spread throughout the array allow temperature monitoring during the reaction. We describe the integration of the array as part of a lab-on-chip cartridge that plugs into a motherboard for power management, biasing, data acquisition, and temperature regulation. This forms a robust ion detection platform, which is demonstrated as a pH sensing system. We show that our calibration is able to perform readout with a linear spread of 0.3% and that the system exhibits a high pH sensitivity of 3.2 μs/pH. The complete system is shown to perform on-chip realtime DNA amplification and detection of lambda phage DNA by loop-mediated isothermal amplification.