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MicroLED arrays with the capability of switching each pixel separately with high frequency can serve as structured micro-illumination light engines for applications in sensing, optogenetics, microscopy and many others. We describe a scalable chip process chain for the fabrication of passive-matrix microLED arrays, which were integrated with PCB-based driving electronics. The arrays were produced by deep-etching of conventional planar LED structures on sapphire, followed by filling and planarization steps. The pixel resolution lies in the range of 254 to 2540 pixels-per-inch (ppi), the arrays consist of 32 x 32 pixels. Optical output powers up to 50 µW per pixel were measured. In comparison to CMOS-based approaches, the presented technology is a simplified strategy to produce microLED arrays with high pixel counts.

This work presents a low cost fluorescence life time measurement system, aimed at carrying out fast diagnostic tests through label detection in a portable system so it can be used in a medical consultation, within a short time span. The system uses Time Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC), measuring the arrival time of individual photons and building a histogram of those times, showing the fluorescence decay of the label which is characteristic of each fluorescent substance. The system is implemented using a Xilinx FPGA which controls the experiment and includes a Time to Digital Converter (TDC) to perform measurements with a resolution in the order of tenths of picoseconds. Also included are a laser diode and the driving electronics to generate short pulses as well as a HV-CMOS implemented Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) as a high gain sensor. The system is entirely configurable so it can easily be adapted to the target label molecule and measurement needs. The histogram is constructed within the FPGA and can then be read as convenient. Various performance parameters are also shown, as well as experimental measurements of a quantum dot fluorescence decay as a proof of concept.

Point of care devices for the early diagnosis of current relavant diseases of our society require novel miniature and very effective devices. This contribution focuses on the description of behavioral models aimed to develop custom readout Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) for the measurement of Fluorescence and Fluorescence life-time of target substances. The well suited for the ASIC development Verilog-A behavioral description language is used to describe the sensor, an ultra sensitive Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) fabricated in a conventional CMOS process, and the fluorescence signal.

Verilog-AMS is used to model the analog front-end of one channel in a multichannel readout ASIC for Silicon microstrips. The modellization in a behavioral language allowed to extract the requirements of the main components of the channel whithout needing to make the design at transistor level, thus decreasing the design time. This model of a complete channel will be used for further integration with the digital proces-sign electronics of the multichannel ASIC.

Miniaturization of sensors and actuators up to the point of active features in endoscopic capsules, such as locomotion or surgery, is a challenge. VECTOR endoscopic capsule has been designed to be the first endoscopic capsule with active locomotion. It is equipped with mini-legs driven by Brushless DC (BLDC) micro motors. In addition it can be also equipped with some other sensors and actuators, like a liquid lens, that permits to enable advanced functions. Those modules are managed by an ASIC specifically designed for the VECTOR capsule. The ASIC is a complete System-On-Chip (SoC) and integrates all the electronics needed to enable the legged locomotion and the sensing and actuating functions of the capsule in an unique chip. The SoC also enables other functions for endoscopic capsules such as drug delivery and a biopsy system. The size of the SoC is 5.1 mm × 5.2 mm in a 0.35 um high voltage CMOS technology.

Commercial endoscopic capsules are passive. Nevertheless, active capabilities such as active locomotion, drug delivery or biopsy, among others, can now be offered with the aid of robotics. New robotic functions require additional electronics for control purposes, as well as for the sensors and actuators. To avoid increasing the capsule size as a consequence, it is useful to incorporate all the electronics into the minimum number of elements, preferably in a single ASIC. This paper describes the ASIC included in a robotised capsule with the abovementioned active functions. The ASIC is a system-on-chip (SoC) integrating all the electronics needed to control the other electronic elements in the capsule. It also enables the movement of two BLDC motors, illuminates the exploration region and focuses a liquid lens used to achieve advanced vision capabilities. Details of the complete system integration are also given.

The present article describes the design of a new low-voltage radiation-tolerant band gap reference circuit. The proposed circuit has been designed for biasing analog modules in the slow control of the Data Handling Processor for reading DEPFET sensors in the Super KEK-B particle accelerator in Japan. It has been implemented in a 90nm standard CMOS technology. The BGR circuit provides a sub-1V voltage reference. It is possible to operate the circuit with 1 and 1.2V supplies. For that, a trimming net based on resistors was included. Tolerance to radiation is achieved by means of enclosed layout transistors and guard rings. The total area of the BGR is 181x110μm2. The power consumption is set at 18.70uA for the 1V supply case and at 55.18uA for the 1.2V supply case.

It is presented a new method to control brushless micromotors which eliminates freewheeling currents. To test the method, a new driver has been designed and fabricated in a 0.35 µm standard CMOS process. It is shown in the paper how the driver is effectively reducing the freewheeling currents.

Particle detection can be done with many different sensors. In this case, the particle detector is based on avalanche photodiodes (APDs) integrated on standard CMOS technology. The integration of the sensors allows the possibility to integrate also the processing circuitry, reducing the volume of components, the complexity, and also the cost of the total device. The sensor is based on a double sensor detection to discriminate the inherent noise of APDs. An electrical model of the sensor, including noise modeling of dark counts and afterpulsing, based on fabricated component, has been developed to proof the suitability of the proposed detector circuit.

The paper reports the electronics used in a new developed wireless endoscopic capsule provided with novel focus and locomotion features. The locomotion is enabled by using legs driven by 2 brushless DC (BLDC) micromotors. The focusing system is enabled by using a liquid lens with a variable focal. These functions are managed by an ASIC that has been developed to provide the specific innovative functions. The size of the ASIC is 3.0 mm × 2.7 mm in a 0.35 um high voltage CMOS technology. The ASIC is described in detail, as well as the performances when it is used with the final devices used in the capsule.

Microrobots were proposed more than 20 years ago but it has proven challenging to integrate a power system and actuators into some few mm3. There have been some attempts to create an autonomous mobile microrobot but any has been successful. Moreover, the proposed microrobots were simply mobile platforms incapable of sensing its environment and taking decisions. I-SWARM has been designed to be a real autonomous microrobot. It is powered by solar cells and provided with a locomotion unit for moving, an IR module for communicating and a contact tip for detecting near objects. Those modules are managed by an ASIC designed specifically for I-SWARM. All the electronics (power electronics, buffers, ADCs, DACs, control unit, analog transducers and an oscillator) have been embedded in the ASIC due to the limited area, 3 × 3 mm2. The ASIC is a complete System On Chip (SoC) that has several features not reported before in any circuit for microrobots: communicate and act cooperatively with other I-SWARM microrobots, detect near objects, measure distance to an object, light trailing and reprogramability. This paper gives some guidelines to design integrated circuits for microrobots.

A microrobot is a robot under a few cubic millimeters in size. Miniaturizing its components, power source, sensors and actuators, has proven challenging. As a consequence, few autonomous microrobots have been reported until recently [1–3]. These are simple mobile platforms, without sensors on board. Their electronics are basically focused on motion. I-SWARM is the first autonomous microrobot, 23mm3 and 70mg, designed to move, sense, take decisions, communicate and work in cooperation with other I-SWARM microrobots [4]. The area and weight of a microrobot are critical and limits the use of off-the-shelf components. So, it is required to integrate in a unique chip all the electronics, including the clock source, the POR and the voltage regulators.

In this paper is presented the design of a driver for a Namiki micro motor. The micro motor is used as a basic element for the locomotion of an endoscopic capsule to explore the entire gastrointestinal tract. The driver is based on the basic 3-phase structure with synchronous rectification and is designed in a full-custom ASIC in the h35 automotive technology of Austriamicrosystems.

It is described the architecture of the electronics for the control of a wireless endoscopic capsule, with locomotive capabilities and advanced sensing and actuating functions. The architecture chosen provides enough flexibility to allow managing of core and switchable functions. Flexibility is assured with an on-chip micro-processor. Operation under different scenarios is possible by using a specifically designed interface chip able to manage all the required sensors and actuators.

This paper reports on the design and implementation of a low-voltage, low-power Wake-Up circuit consisting on a Power-on-Reset module and a clock generator. No external components are used neither for the Power-on- Reset nor for the clock generation. The clock generator module is temperature compensated by applying a current limiting technique. The Wake-Up circuit has been fabricated in a 130 nm ultra-low power technology of STMicroelectronics in an area of 40 μm times 40 μm.

This paper is focused on the main issues of designing a SoC for a completely autonomous mm3-sized microrobot. It is described how all the electronics are included in a unique chip, the special requirements in the assembly process and how the hard constraints in power consumption are managed. Power in the robot is delivered by solar cells mounted on top and two supercapacitors which act as batteries. The maximum available energy for the SoC is 400 muW for driving the robot actuators and 1 mW for data processing. The special architecture of the SoC and power awareness are required to manage the very low available power.

This paper presents a system on chip (SoC) designed specifically to control a mm3-sized microrobot called I-SWARM. The robot is intended to be part of a colony of 1000 members for studying swarm behavior in real time with real robots. The SoC offers a well-suited hardware platform to run multi-agent systems software. The SoC enables control of movement, communications and sensing. It is a platform where run multi-agent system software. With these capabilities, the robot is able for example to avoiding collisions, perform cooperative tasks, share information and, of course, solve different swarm scenarios and more complex tasks. The SoC has been fabricated with a 0.13 mum ultra low power CMOS process of STMicroelectronics and consumes less than 1.5 mW.

This paper describes the design and test of a digital system, whose purpose is to work as an optical detector for "time of flight" measurements. The system is based on a logarithmic pixel with binary output. Design technology is AMS 0.35 mum CMOS. This structure presents four blocks: i) Receptor block, sensitive to the light excitement, ii) Inverter block to amplify the signal, iii) Feedback block to control the memory effect until next measurement and iv) Ramp Memory block to detect the arriving time of the first laser pulse within the detection window. Experimental results show good response at working frequencies of 100 kHz.

In this paper a low power transceiver for short-range IR-communications between robots is described. The mm3- sized robots will be deployed in an arena of A4 sheet size with controlled illumination conditions. The transceiver can manage variations of background light from point to point in the arena, interferences induced by other robots and deals with the inter-robot distance, i.e., the amplitude of the signal to be detected.

This paper presents the electronics for the resonance control of a resonance contact sensor. The interface consists in an analog front-end and a digital control unit, fabricated in a CMOS standard technology of 0.13 mum from STM. The sensor is a SMART multi-layer piezo-polymer micro-cantilever working in resonance mode. The sensing is done using an electrical isolated piezo-layer of the microstructure. For the design of the electronics an electrical model of the sensor has been developed. The model is described in detail in the paper.

This paper is focused on the power features of a ultra-low power SoC for 3 times 3 times 3 mm3 microrobot. The SoC is based on the 8051 microcontroller and fabricated with a 0.13 mum ultra-low leakage CMOS process of STMicroelectronics. Because of the very restrictively power constraints, less than 1 mW, we have added a Power Management Unit (PMU) and a programmable clock generator to allow Dynamic Frequency Scaling (DFS). Leakage and analog static currents consume 700 muW leaving only 300 muW for robot driving and data processing. The static power has been improved by adding switch off transistors so the SoC can obtain more dynamic power by switching on/off different modules as a function of the task to execute.

A low power successive approximation analog-to-digital converter is presented operating at 1.2 V supply. The circuit has been designed in a 0.13 μm standard CMOS technology. The power consumption while converting is 13 μW, and in standby mode the power is reduced to 5.8 μW. The resolution is programmable between 1 to 8 bits. It can work from 500 Hz up to 50 kHz clock frequencies.

A digital controller for a 1 cm microrobot fabricated in a 0.35mum CMOS process is presented. The robot is provided with two piezoactuators based on stick-slip and non-sliding movement: a carrier platform and a rotor to position an arm provided with a nanomanipulation tool as an AFM tip. The control signals are generated by the controller chip using the Bresenham algorithm. It has been adapted to the robot movements improving the power consumption. Power reduction is of at least 30%

A specific integrated controller for a wireless and autonomous microrobot of 1 cm3 is presented. The microrobot is equipped with an atomic force microscopy (AFM) probe, a syringe or a gripper to develop cooperative tasks in biological experiences. Its main functionality and the controller design is focused on nanomicroscopy and cellular manipulation. The circuit manages the microrobot locomotion unit and its tools with nanometric resolution.

A specific integrated controller for a wireless and autonomous microrobot of 1cm/sup 3/ is presented. The robot is equipped with an AFM probe, an injection needle, a gripper, or a micropipette. Hence, its main functionality and the controller design is focused on nanomicroscopy and cellular manipulation. The circuit manages the robot locomotion unit and its tools with nanometric resolution. Communication is done by means of the IrDA protocol implemented in the controller.

The micro and nanomanipulation is one of the main challenges in our days. One approach is based on the use of a limited cluster of microrobots working in a cooperative way. For the development of the activity each robot of the cluster has assigned a different task. This implies that each robot has a different specialization. Our objective is to present in this paper the design of the electronics developed for these robots, taking into account the important challenges regarding the available area, and that the robot should possess enough autonomy. The most versatile solution is pursued because a particular electronics is not to be developed for each specialized robot. In function of the robot's specialty it will receive the necessary orders, being permeable the electronics to any case. In this paper is presented in a general way these different specializations.

A mixed-mode temperature control system for gas sensors is described in this work. It has been designed to be capable of controlling different gas sensor structures. The temperature range and accuracy depend on the gas sensor structure but are usually in the range of from room temperature up to 600/spl deg/C within 1/spl deg/C accuracy. The circuit has been designed with 0.8 /spl mu/m HV CMOS AMS technology in order to support the 15 V biasing voltage that is necessary to reach these high temperatures. A serial peripheral interface communication port allows real time monitoring of the heater resistance. It also allows setting of the parameters of the control and temperature reference.

A mixed-mode interface circuit for monolithically integrated gas sensor arrays has been developed. Circuitry includes the heater driver for the temperature control, interface electronics for inspection of up to four sensors array and interface logic for smart control. Because of its characteristics as robustness, small, size, low price and future capabilities with the adequate signal processing the system composed by the sensor and the application specific integrated circuit would be able to cover most of today markets considered for gas sensors.