Raghu Tumati

Date of Award

5-2008

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Campus-Only Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Advisor

David E. Kotecki

Second Committee Member

Rosemary Smith

Third Committee Member

Scott Collins

Abstract

The detection and identification of a particle transported in an aqueous solution through a nanopore (< l0nm opening in a thin dielectric membrane) is of technological importance and has various applications. For example, in a DNA nano-sequencer, an electrical signal is generated when a single strand of DNA passes through the nanopore. This signal is amplified by a transimpedance amplifier, then converted to a digital signal representing one of the four possible bases in the DNA. There are many challenges in implementing this sequencer. One of the challenges is to design a transimpedance amplifier with sufficient bandwidth and sensitivity to correctly identify each nucleotide. In this work the I-V characteristics of a solid-state nanopore are determined. A low-noise transimpedance amplifier was designed to increase the magnitude of the electrical signals for further signal analysis. The transimpedance amplifier, designed in 240nm IBM BiCMOS process, has an input capacitance of 250fF, a gain of 120dBf2, a bandwidth of 4MHz and a minimum input referred noise of \30fA/V7lz. Power dissipation is 17.7mW.

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