An Ultra-High-Density 256-channel/25mm2 Neural Sensing Microsystem using TSV-embedded Neural Probes

Highly integrated neural sensing microsystems are crucial to capture accurate signals for brain function investigations. In this paper, a 256-channel/25 mm(2) neural sensing microsystem is presented based on through-silicon-via (TSV) 2.5D integration. This microsystem composes of dissolvable mu-needles, TSV-embedded mu-probes, 256-channel neural amplifiers, 11-bit area-power-efficient SAR ADCs and serializers. Based on the dissolvable mu-needles and TSV 2.5D integration, this microsystem can detect 256 ECoG/LFP signals within the small area of 5mm x 5mm. Additionally, the neural amplifier realizes 57.8dB gain with only 9.8 mu W for each channel, and the 9.7-bit ENOB of the SAR ADC at 32kS/s can be achieved with 0.42 mu W and 0.036 mm(2). The overall power of this microsystem is only 3.79mW for 256-channel neural sensing.