Title: CMOS RF NMR Biosensor & Dual-Mode Pipelined ADC
Speaker: Dr. Nan Sun, Harvard University
When: 10:00-11:30, June 17, 2010
Where: Room 401, Building of School of Microelectronics
Host: Prof Zhou Jianjun
Abstract:
First presentation to showcase how silicon radio-frequency (RF) chips can be used not only for wireless RF applications, but also for biomolecular sensing aimed at low-cost disease screening. The main function of the RF chip is to manipulate and monitor the dynamics of protons in water via nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Target biological objects such as cancer marker proteins alter the proton dynamics, which is the basis for the biosensing. The high sensitivity of the RF chip made possible the construction of an entire NMR system around the RF chip in a 100-g platform, which is 1200 times lighter, yet 150 times more spin-mass sensitive than a state-of-the-art commercial benchtop NMR system. The system can become a useful addition in pursuing disease detection in a low-cost, hand-held platform.
Second presentation is the design of a high figure-of-merit (FOM) pipelined ADC, made possible by a new, dual-mode-based digital background calibration technique that altogether corrects errors caused by amplifier gain insufficiency and nonlinearity, and capacitor mismatches. The calibration enables the intentional use of low-gain single-stage op-amps to save power. It improves the measured signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) and spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) by 15 dB and 28 dB respectively, leading to the FOM of 155 fJ/conv-step.
Speaker Bio:
Nan Sun received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2006, where he ranked 1/160 and graduated with the highest honor and Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award. He is expected to receive his Ph.D. degree in September 2010 from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. He will join The University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor in January 2011.
Mr. Sun won Top Prize in Intercollegiate Physics Competition in 2003. He received Samsung Fellowship in 2003, Hewlett Packard Fellowship in 2006, and Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2007. He was also awarded the Harvard Teaching Award in 2008, 2009, and 2010.