Review: A Highly-Integrated 1536-Channel Quad-Shank Monolithic Neural Probe in 55nm CMOS for Full-Band Raw-Signal Recording

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Paper

A Highly-Integrated 1536-Channel Quad-Shank Monolithic Neural Probe in 55nm CMOS for Full-Band Raw-Signal Recording

Review by: 王奕如

Full Review: View Review Document (PDF)

Overview

This work presents a 1536-channel quad-shank monolithic neural probe fabricated in 55 nm CMOS, supporting simultaneous recording from up to 1536 out of 5120 electrodes.

Rather than focusing solely on minimum area or power per channel, the work addresses system-level trade-offs in large-scale neural recording, including electrode density, noise, power, area, multiplexing, and data readout.

Key Features

5120 electrodes / 1536 simultaneous recording channels
Conventional IA–buffer–MUX–SAR ADC signal chain
Dynamically biased buffers for reduced power
96 shared 12-bit SAR ADCs
Shared ADC reference buffers
Full-band recording of both AP and LFP signals

Key Results

Parameter	Performance
Technology	55 nm CMOS
Recording Electrodes	5120
Simultaneous Recording Channels	1536
Probe Structure	Quad-shank
ADC	12-bit SAR
Channel Area	0.012 mm²/ch
Total Power	29.7 mW
Power / Channel	19.34 µW/ch
AP Input-Referred Noise	6.01 ± 0.39 µVrms
LFP Input-Referred Noise	7.58 ± 0.79 µVrms
ADC SNDR	64.92 dB

Takeaway

This work provides a representative example of system-level optimization for high-density neural recording, balancing channel density, noise, power, area, and system scalability.

It also demonstrates that the conventional IA + MUX + SAR ADC architecture remains highly competitive for large-scale neural recording when carefully optimized.

For detailed discussions of the pixel architecture, instrumentation amplifier, dynamic-bias buffer, SAR ADC, and reference buffer design, please refer to the full review document.