A 376μW per-channel, Drift-tolerant Translocation Recording Frontend with Event Detection for Nanopore Sensor Arrays

Abstract

This paper presents a multi-channel readout chip for high throughput single molecule sensing with solidstate nanopores. The readout IC achieves 1 MHz BW to capture the fast translocation signals coming from such nanopores. Since molecule translocation events are typically sparse in time, the ASIC features a novel analog event detection circuit to detect which pores have molecules passing through them and only records from those pores. A 16-channel prototype readout IC implemented in 0.18-mu m CMOS is demonstrated which can be connected to commercial nanopores. The recording frontend is only 0.024 mm(2)/channel and consumes 376 mu W/channel. Both electrical characterization and actual single-molecule sensing with commercial nanopores are demonstrated.