A 1024-Channel Simultaneous Electrophysiological and Electrochemical Neural Recording System With In-Pixel Digitization and Crosstalk Compensation

Abstract

Simultaneous electrophysiological and chemical recording allows for multi-modal neural instrumentation and provides insights into chemical synapses and ion channels across the cell membrane. However, inter-modal interference can hinder highly synchronized recording in large-scale systems with high temporal and spatial resolution. In this work, we propose a 1024-channel lab-on-CMOS system for dual-modal neural recording with in-pixel digitization and interference suppression. A foreground calibration scheme with tunable capacitance is implemented in-pixel to compensate for the crosstalk between electrical and chemical recording. Active pixels for both electrical and chemical modalities are designed based on a pulse width modulation (PWM) analog-to-digital conversion scheme. CMOS-compatible post-processing is implemented to realize in-pixel electrodes and chemical sensing membranes. The prototype, implemented in a 180 nm CMOS technology, occupies a total area of 33 mm² with 1024 pixels, and each unit pixel includes one electrical recording site and two chemical recording sites, with dimensions of 150 $\mu$m $\times$ 130 $\mu$m. The total system power consumption is 19.68 mW at a frame rate of 9k and 3k for electrical and chemical imaging respectively. The in-vitro experiment demonstrated the concurrent high density electrophysilogical and electrochemical recording with sub millisecond temporal resolution.