A high resolution current stimulating probe for use in neural prostheses

Author

Kim, C. ; Kang, D. ; Brown, R.B. ; Wise, K.D.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI, USA

fYear

1991

fDate

1-2 Mar 1991

Firstpage

202

Lastpage

206

Abstract

The authors describe a high resolution monolithic current stimulating probe which is a multichannel microprobe capable of delivering precisely controlled charge to highly-localized regions of tissue (for example, the auditory nervous system) on a chronic basis. This chip has 8 stimulating sites and provides 7 bits of current level control, that is -126 μA to +126 μA with 2 μA resolution. In order to improve controllability and reduce the cost of the circuitry, the integrated stimulating microprobe is addressable and self-testing. Implemented features include self-test capabilities, a bipolar current forcing scheme for the effective stimulation of the tissue and a user-specified time-out scheme which makes the microstimulator safe. The total number of pads is 14, eight of which are stimulating sites, with the others being used for overall circuit control and power supplies. The chip is designed in an n-epitaxial, p-well, 1.2 μm, double metal CMOS process with an area of 0.24 mm² excluding bonding pads

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; bioelectric phenomena; biomedical electronics; neurophysiology; probes; prosthetics; -126 to 126 muA; 1.2 micron; bipolar current forcing scheme; current stimulating probe; double metal CMOS process; high resolution; highly-localized regions; integrated stimulating microprobe; multichannel microprobe; n-epitaxial p-well process; neural prostheses; self-testing; tissue; user-specified time-out scheme; Built-in self-test; CMOS process; Circuits; Control systems; Controllability; Costs; Level control; Nervous system; Power supplies; Probes;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

VLSI, 1991. Proceedings., First Great Lakes Symposium on

Conference_Location

Kalamazoo, MI

Print_ISBN

0-8186-2170-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/GLSV.1991.143966

Filename

143966