Jun-Chau Chien
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Microchips can do more than compute. With the right circuit design, they can radiate and receive radio signals at very high frequencies, or detect tiny electrical changes produced by molecules and bacteria.
- Fields
Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
radio-frequency integrated circuits
3D integrated circuits
3D IC
- Grants
- 4 known grants, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- Develop low-loss wireless interconnects that carry radio signals between face-to-face stacked chips separated by a 10–20 µm gap, together with a low-cost chip-stacking process for 3D radio-frequency integrated circuits.
- Create an antenna measurement method based on electromagnetic backscattering, using an on-chip CMOS calibration technique to remove reflections from surrounding structures instead of traditional RF probing.
- Demonstrate a scalable 4×4 phased-array system at 140 and 240 GHz using a compact out-phasing transmitter with 16-STAR modulation, 3D-stacked silicon-germanium amplifiers and silicon dielectric resonator antennas.
- Build ultrasensitive chip-based bacteria sensors using high-Q resonators and circuit techniques that overcome the noise-power trade-off, for broadband dielectric spectroscopy and detection of single magnetic nanoparticles.
- Integrate microfluidic channels inside a silicon chip by removing internal metal routing with wet and plasma etching, then combine spectroscopy, magnetic sensing and deep learning to identify bacterial strains.
- Amplify the signal of aptamer biosensors (DNA strands that bind specific molecules) on the spot using DNA origami, and pair them with CMOS interface circuits approaching shot-noise-limited sensitivity.
- Develop methods to attach different aptamers to specific sites on a scalable sensor array, and build a wireless wearable for interstitial fluid plus a CMOS-microfluidic blood analysis system using machine learning for calibration.
- Assess the real-world translation potential of a wearable, reagent-free biosensor that uses structure-switching DNA and custom low-noise CMOS circuits to measure multiple biomarkers in real time.
More about the research
The work spans both directions. On the wireless side, it builds stacked radio chips for future high-bandwidth communication. On the health side, it pairs CMOS chips (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, the standard silicon technology in everyday electronics) with DNA-based sensors, microfluidics (tiny fluid channels) and electromagnetic spectroscopy. The goal is small, portable diagnostic devices. A shared theme is designing low-noise, low-power circuits that pull weak signals out of noise.
Why it matters
Patients with bacterial infections often wait days for culture results before getting targeted treatment. A portable chip that identifies bacteria quickly could help clinics, hospitals and emergency rooms treat sooner. Wearable and point-of-care molecular sensors could make frequent biomarker testing practical, which may support earlier disease detection and personalized care beyond annual checkups. Separately, 3D-stacked radio chips operating above 100 GHz could serve as building blocks for compact, very high-bandwidth wireless communication systems.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kamal Sarabandi
University of Michigan, MI·Engineering
Build a fiber-fed RF probe on a 65-nm CMOS chip that uses photovoltaic cells and an avalanche photodiode at its tip to generate a localized electric field over 0–12 GHz.
Negar Reiskarimian
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA·Engineering
Demonstrate a low-power software-defined radio chip that resists harmonic interference, using a fully passive harmonic-reject mixer and a compact clocking scheme with sub-milliwatt static power.
Taiyun Chi
Rice University, TX·Engineering·Early-career
Build a fully packaged implanted neural interface with more than ten times the channel count of current systems, combining a low-power application-specific integrated circuit for recording, stimulation and digitization with a flexible intracortical probe and a high-speed digital backend.
The school
University of California-Berkeley: 46 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 825 research doctorates a year.
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