Chemical bionics - a novel design approach using Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistors

Abstract

This paper introduces Chemical Bionics in which the biochemical physiology of cells in the body are implemented in VLSI to make novel bio-inspired therapeutic devices. As an example, the glucose dependant electrophysiology of the pancreatic beta cell is implemented in silicon to form a novel bio-inspired prosthetic for glucose homeostasis of Type I diabetes. For this, the Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistor (ISFET) is shown as a suitable chemical sensing front end, which allows CMOS monolithic implementation, as well as low power weak-inversion operation.