Abstract
Neural probes have become the most importan t tool for enabling neuroscientists to place microelectrode sensors close to individual neurons and to monitor their activity in vivo .W i t h such devices, it is possible to perform acute o r chronic extra- cellular recordings of electrical activity from a single neuron or from groups of neurons. After the many developments in neural implants, it has become clear that large arr ays of electrodes are desirable to further investi gate the activity performed by complex neural networks. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a CMOS neural probe containing 455 activ ee l e c t r o d e si nt h e probe shank (100 m wide, 10 mm long, and 50 m thick) and 52 simultaneous readout channels in the probe body (2.9 3.3 mm ). In situ amplification under each el ectrode enables low-impedance interconnection lines, regardles s of the electrode impedance, with a residual crosstalk of 44.8 dB. This design has been imple- mented in a 0.18- ms t a n d a r dC M OS technology, with additional CMOS-compatible post-processing performed at wafer level to define the electrodes and the probe outline. In this architecture, the analog front-end achieves an input-referred noise of 3.2 V and an NEF of 3.08. The power consumption of the core circuit is 949.8 W, while the total power consumption is 1.45 mW. The high-density active-el ectrode array in this neural probe allows for the massive recording of neural activity. In vivo measurements demonstrate successful simult