Guest Editorial Special Issue on Advances and Open Challenges for Integrated Circuits Detecting Bio Molecules

The four articles in this special section focus on multidisciplinary advancements for CMOS integrated circuit technology-based solutions. Specially, examines advances for integrated circuits that detect biomolecules. Despite the continuing convergence of microelectronics with biomedicine, important technical challenges still constrain the deployment of integrated circuits in microanalytical devices, operating both in vivo and in vitro. From the standpoint of electronic circuit design, the trade-offs between resolution (noise), area (cost), and power dissipation need to be carefully optimized. These tradeoffs, while familiar, are crucial for endowing portable, wearable, and implantable devices with high sensitivity. Some applications prioritize ultra low noise, such as single-biomolecule detection using nanopore sensors. In other spaces, power dissipation and die area are clearly major constraints when thousands of sensing channels are integrated on a single chip, as in the case of image sensors and electrophysiology arrays interfacing with live tissue. Secondly, from a system-level point of view, reliable and scalable solutions are required for packaging CMOS chips to be used in contact with liquid samples. Fabrication approaches need to be found for creating chip-to-liquid interfaces (micro-tomacro scale), which are feasible both for small-scale academic prototypes and for high-volume manufacturing. Other perennial challenges include post-silicon fabrication of high performance transducers and electrodes. Finally, the different avenues for monolithic or hybrid integration of multichannel and low-noise analog front-ends with digital back-ends for data processing and wireless communication circuitry pose important technical design challenges.