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Updated: May 9, 2026

Bridging the Bio-Electronic Interface with Biofabrication
Published on: June 6, 2012
A bionics chemical synapse
Surachoke Thanapitak1, Christofer Toumazou
1Division of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK. st706@ic.ac.uk
Abstract:
Implementation of the current mode CMOS circuit for chemical synapses (AMPA and NMDA receptors) with dynamic change of glutamate as the neurotransmitter input is presented in this paper. Additionally, circuit realisation for receptor GABA(A) and GABA(B) with an electrical signal which symbolises γ-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) perturbation is introduced. The chemical sensor for glutamate sensing is the modified ISFET with enzyme (glutamate oxidase) immobilisation. The measured results from these biomimetics chemical synapse circuits closely match with the simulation result from the mathematical model. The total power consumption of the whole chip (four chemical synapse circuits and all auxiliary circuits) is 168.3 μW. The total chip area is 3 mm(2) in 0.35-μm AMS CMOS technology.
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