Capacitive sensor array (CSA) plays an important role in life science applications, such as cell monitoring, DNA detection, or drug screening. This brief presents a <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$480\times 960$ </tex-math></inline-formula> time-sharing TDC (ts-TDC) architecture of global shutter CSA. It provides an opportunity to merge interfacing, read-out and sampling circuits in pixel and dynamically adjust the electrode size according to the characteristic of biosample. Each pixel size is within <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.25\times 2.25\,\,\mu m^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The sensitivity of the proposed CSA is 6.896 codes/fF, and 43 fps can be adopted for real-time monitoring. Experiment results show that noise canceling significantly improves the sensing performance. Moreover, sensitivity can be optimized by given fusion-pixel pattern, making our proposal very flexible and suitable for cell biology applications and personalized medicine.

Wen-Yue Lin

Papers

A 460 800 Pixels CMOS Capacitive Sensor Array With Programmable Fusion Pixels and Noise Canceling for Life Science Applications