Chitkara University in collaboration with SCL Mohali develop Neural Amplifier Silicon Chip

Chandigarh: The VLSI Centre of Excellence, Chitkara University in collaboration with Semi-conductor Laboratory (SCL), Mohali,  have designed and fabricated a low-voltage low-noise neural amplifier silicon chip in 0.18 µm technology useful for diagnosis of various chronic diseases like Parkinson, Spinal cord injuries, Epilepsy and Paralysis etc. 

This neural amplifier chip was released in an event held in Chitkara University campus today in the presence of Dr. Madhu Chitkara (Pro Chancellor, Chitkara University), Dr. Archana Mantri (Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University) and Sh. H.S. Jatana (Group Head - Design and Process group, Semi-conductor Laboratory (SCL), Mohali, Punjab, India). 

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Madhu Chitkara Pro Chancellor, Chitkara University reiterated University’s commitment to promote the cause of research and innovation so as to pass on the maximum benefit to its students who eventually are nation builders of tomorrow.

Dr. Archana Mantri, Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University expressed her happiness about the way outcome based research to benefit the society has been one of the important goals of any research tasks taken up at the university. She congratulated Dr. Rajnish Sharma (Lead-VLSI Center of Excellence) under whose guidance Dr. Kulbhushan Sharma could accomplish this challenging task of coming up with the neural amplifier IC chip design.

Sh. H.S. Jatana (Group Head - Design and Process group, SCL) congratulated the whole team of Chitkara University and applauded the support provided by University management to faculty members and students to involve themselves in these kinds of challenging research tasks. He explained the possible usage of the chip in the industry domain.

The designed neural amplifier silicon chip can also be used in developing neural prosthetics systems for physically disabled persons. Mr Kulbhushan Sharma under the supervision of Senior Professor Dr. Rajnish Sharma from Chitkara University and SCL team lead by Shri. H. S. Jatana was associated with this work. The layout and post-layouts simulations of neural amplifier silicon chip were performed by Mr Kulbhushan Sharma during a few months training at SCL under the observation of SCL Senior Scientist Mr. Rahul Kumar Tripathi. 

This work is an example of hand in hand efforts put forth by both academia and industry which is useful not only for clinics and patients but also to the research scholars and circuit design community working in bio-potential signal recording all over the world. Further, the novel low-voltage and low-noise techniques reported in the design of neural amplifier are expected to be used by the scientific community for implementing various other circuits such as voltage amplifiers and transimpedance amplifiers etc. for biomedical applications.   

VLSI Center of Excellence is an Integral part of Chitkara University Research and Innovation Network (CURIN) which is basically responsible for doing active research so as to deliver real solutions for the benefit of the society at large.