Ultrasound stimulation is slowly emerging as an effective treatment to alleviate multiple mental illnesses. The advantage of ultrasound stimulation stems from the ability to stimulate regions that are spatially far off from the stimulating device without sacrificing spatial resolution. This directly implies the ability to devise minimally invasive stimulators that can employ beamforming to focus and steer ultrasound waves to different points in the brain. This is in stark contrast to electrical stimulation techniques that rely on invasive methods of inserting electrodes very close to the site of stimulation to obtain the desired resolution and selectivity. This work involves the preliminary system design of a 1-D IC array for beamforming. This novel low area and power IC can be integrated
with a neuro-vascular stent and using minimal surgery, inserted in a blood vessel. Once placed, it can independently send out focused ultrasound waves without losing any resolution due to the skull low-pass characteristics. The final IC channel devised consumes an area of 143*52 µm2 and consists of the beamforming circuitry, level shifter, the high voltage driver and the digital control block. The chip was fabricated using TSMC 180 nm BCD technology and measured using a PCB and FPGA (for the control signals). The final measured results match the expected results from post layout simulations.