Low-Noise Potentiostat Readout Circuit with a Chopper Fully Differential Difference Amplifier for Glucose Monitoring

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

line 40 --explain the abbreviation of "Isen" like in "working electrode (WE)" and for consistency, I suggest using (Isense) instead of Isen.

line 42 --- "Vcel" for consistency keep the same editing style (eg Italic) since at line 114 "Vcel" is different.

line 54 -- "Vsrc" change the style

line 57 -- editing style or "Vsrc"

line 57 -- explain the "SE" and the"SSE"

line 60 -- "Vdd" and "Vss" should be written in the same way as in eq 1. In general varying indices should be italic. If you used mathmode this should be default.

line 62-- "Vcell" should be changed. In general varying indices should be italic. If you used mathmode this should be default.

line 66 --- which is the difference between "SFD" from here and "SFD" from eq 2. put ":" after "expressed as"

line 68-- "Rsense" should be written in the same way like in eq 2. In general varying indices should be italic. If you used mathmode this should be default.

lines 92, 93 -- check the consistency between eq 3 and termns explanations, eg "AO"; Vnm is underlined, etc

lines 96 and 97 -- change the editing style for "Vcell" and "Vsrc".

line 104 - Figure 4 instead of "Fig. 4", to keep the manuscript consistent.

line 114 -- add a reference related to Monticelli style. eg MONTICELLI, D.M.: "A quad CMOS single-supplyop amp with rail-to-rail output swing". IEEE J. of Solid-State Circuits, 1986, SC-21, (6), pp. 1026-1034.

line124 -- start with the capital letter in "potentiostat..."

line 139 -- what does "gm" mean? you never referred to it before.

line 141 -- keep the consistency...in the CMFB circuit (figure 6) the name of capacitor and rezistor is"Ccm" and "Rcm", respectively.

line 155 - the table 3 title "Simulation..." is in contradiction with explanation from lines 153-154 "... commercial glucose strip". What kind of values are in table 3?

line 182 - "Figure 9" instead of "Figure 10". Same issues at lines 184 and 185

line 186 -- put the correct units at resistors 100kΩ

line 198 -- needs "Figure 11" instead of "Figure 10"

line 206 - put "summarizes" instead of "summarize"

 

Author Response

Manuscript ID: applsci-1992500

 

Oct 27, 2022

 

MDPI Applied Sciences

 

Dear Editor

 

Enclosed please find the revised version of the manuscript entitled, " Low-noise Potentiostat Readout Circuit with a Chopper Fully Differential Difference Amplifier for Glucose Monitoring," being submitted for the MDPI Applied Sciences. I appreciate the valuable comments from the reviewers. I would also like to use the next page to answer the questions brought by the reviewers.

 

Thank you very much for your consideration.

 

 

 

 

Sincerely,

 

                                       Hyoungho Ko

                                       Ph.D.

 

 

 

enclosures

gc/HK

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This work presents an integrated-circuits-based potentiostat readout system for glucose monitoring. FDDA topology and chopping techniques are implemented to minimize the low-frequency noise. The work is written clearly with detailed engineering parameters. There are some minor comments:

 

1. Could you briefly explain your consideration about the chopper ripple/thermal noise/impedance change due to the chopper?

2. The justification for using FDDA structure is not very clear to me, is it for good power efficiency?

3. The reference in the comparison table is a bit outdated, most are from before 2017 (almost 5 years), could you update a few with the most recent ones in IEEE SENSORS/TBioCAS or JSSC?

Author Response

Manuscript ID: applsci-1992500

 

Oct 27, 2022

 

MDPI Applied Sciences

 

Dear Editor

 

Enclosed please find the revised version of the manuscript entitled, " Low-noise Potentiostat Readout Circuit with a Chopper Fully Differential Difference Amplifier for Glucose Monitoring," being submitted for the MDPI Applied Sciences. I appreciate the valuable comments from the reviewers. I would also like to use the next page to answer the questions brought by the reviewers.

 

Thank you very much for your consideration.

 

 

 

 

Sincerely,

 

                                       Hyoungho Ko

                                       Ph.D.

 

 

 

enclosures

gc/HK

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

 

The paper by Gyuri Choi, Kyeongsik Nam, Mookyoung Yoo, Sanggyun Kang, Byeongkwan Jin, Kyounghwan Kim, Hyeoktae Son and Hyoungho Ko  entitled “Low-noise Potentiostat Readout Circuit with a Chopper Fully Differential Difference Amplifier for Glucose Monitorin” presents a low-noise potentiostat readout circuit with a chopper fully differential difference amplifier (FDDA) for glucose monitoring.

The proposed potentiostat readout circuit is based on a low-noise chopper FDDA with a class-AB output stage. The implementation of the chopper FDDA scheme of the potentiostat readout circuit can decrease the number of amplifiers in the control part of the potentiostat, with reduced power consumption and a wide dynamic output range. The negative feedback loop of the inverting amplifier scheme with the FDDA maintains the voltage between the WE and RE constants. The negative feedback loop tracks the reference voltage of the RE with an input voltage of the WE.

The proposed potentiostat readout circuit is designed in standard 0.18 μm CMOS process, and the simulated current consumption is 48.54 μA with a 1.8 V power supply. The simulated  input referred noise level is 8.53 pArms.

The circuit was implemented using a 0.18 μm CMOS process, and the proposed potentiostat biasing circuit had an area of 330 μm ×374 μm.

Table 4 summarize the performance of the proposed potentiostat readout circuit with those of previous studies.

I think that the paper reflects useful advances in the related field. The authors demonstrated clearly what they aimed. I suggest to publish the work as is.

 

Author Response

Manuscript ID: applsci-1992500

 

Oct 27, 2022

 

MDPI Applied Sciences

 

Dear Editor

 

Enclosed please find the revised version of the manuscript entitled, " Low-noise Potentiostat Readout Circuit with a Chopper Fully Differential Difference Amplifier for Glucose Monitoring," being submitted for the MDPI Applied Sciences. I appreciate the valuable comments from the reviewers. I would also like to use the next page to answer the questions brought by the reviewers.

 

Thank you very much for your consideration.

 

 

 

 

Sincerely,

 

                                       Hyoungho Ko

                                       Ph.D.

 

 

 

enclosures

gc/HK

Author Response File: Author Response.docx