简介

Prof. Brown and his students develop silicon-based potentiometric sensors having uniform characteristics and long lifetimes; miniature biocompatible reference electrodes; conductivity sensors for quantifying hematocrit levels; enzymatically- and immunologically-coupled sensors for complex molecules; and amperometric sensors for heavy metals and neurochemicals. His group was first to incorporate chemical sensing technology on silicon-based neural probes. Their work in neural interfaces also involved placing arrays of microelectrodes on the surface of the human motor cortex; ten spoken words were differentiated with good predictability from the brain surface signals. Prof. Brown’s research group develops low-power mixed-signal microcontrollers to serve as single-chip interface instruments for solid-state sensors. These microcontrollers have included full analog front-ends, a DSP block for processing sound for cochlear prostheses, and an on-chip oscillator that eliminated the need for a crystal-based clock.