title: A sub-microwatt piezo-floating-gate sensor for long-term fatigue monitoring in biomechanical implants.
abstract: In this paper we describe an implementation of a novel fatigue monitoring sensor based on integration of piezoelectric transduction with floating gate avalanche injection. The miniaturized sensor enables continuous battery-less monitoring and time-to-failure predictions of biomechanical implants. Measured results from a fabricated prototype in a 0.5 microm CMOS process indicate that the device can compute cumulative statistics of electrical signals generated by piezoelectric transducer, while consuming less that 1 microW of power. The ultra-low power operation makes the sensor attractive for integration with poly-vinylidene difluoride (PVDF) based transducers that have already proven to be biocompatible.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Civil & Environ. Eng., Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. lajnefni@msu.edu
authors.forename: Nizar
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lajnef
authors.forename: Shantanu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chakrabartty
authors.forename: Niell
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Elvin
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Elvin
mesh_terms: D000669:Amplifiers, Electronic; D001672:Biocompatible Materials / Q000737:chemistry; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000379:methods; D004867:Equipment Design / Q000379:methods*; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008839:Microelectrodes; D011145:Polyvinyls / Q000737:chemistry; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D013718:Tensile Strength; D014159:Transducers; D014173:Transistors, Electronic; D005465:Fluorocarbon Polymers
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D011145:Polyvinyls; C024865:polyvinylidene fluoride; D005465:Fluorocarbon Polymers