A 20-part series presented by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society. Prof. Behzad Razavi (UCLA) explores the intuitive elegance, mathematical foundations, and real-world impact of modern analog and integrated-circuit design.
| Episode | Topic (Video Title) | Overview | Watch |
|---|---|---|---|
Episode 01 | From Air Bags to Capacitors | Prof. Behzad Razavi reveals the engineering inside automotive safety systems, moving from Newton’s Second Law to differential inter-digital finger structures in MEMS accelerometers. | Watch Episode 1 |
Episode 02 | From Microphones to Amplifiers | Prof. Razavi deconstructs how smartphone displays drive millions of pixels simultaneously using time-sharing arrays, resistor ladder DACs, and sample-and-hold capacitors. | Watch Episode 2 |
Episode 03 | From Amplifiers to MOSFETs | Exploring capacitive touch interfaces, fringe electric fields, zero-result differential symmetry bridges, and interdigitated comb structures. | Watch Episode 3 |
Episode 04 | From Wireless Chargers to Transformers | Discovering how biological capacitive sensors monitor VEX proteins in the bloodstream by tracking dielectric permittivity shifts and current-to-voltage slopes. | Watch Episode 4 |
Episode 05 | From Earphones to LC Filters | Prof. Razavi deconstructs smartphone power delivery, demonstrating how Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and LC low-pass filters efficiently step down charger voltages. | Watch Episode 5 |
Episode 06 | From Bluetooth to Mixers | How buried pavement inductors detect vehicles at traffic lights using LC tank oscillation frequency shifts and active negative resistance circuits. | Watch Episode 6 |
Episode 07 | From Robotic Arms to Op Amps | Prof. Razavi explores the mechanics of digital quartz watches, 32,768 Hz crystal division, Pierce oscillator topologies, and cascaded 15-bit counters. | Watch Episode 7 |
Episode 08 | From Cancer Detection to Instrumentation Amplifiers | Examining non-invasive optical heart-rate monitoring through reverse-biased photodiodes, integration capacitors, reset switches, and source followers. | Watch Episode 8 |
Episode 09 | From Smart Watches to ADCs | Looking inside EV power inverters to analyze H-Bridge switching, high-current AC synthesis, synchronous clocking, and power MOSFET breakdown limits. | Watch Episode 9 |
Episode 10 | From Electric Vehicles to Inverters | Prof. Razavi examines delicate force control in robotics using Wheatstone bridges, dual-sensor gain enhancement, op-amp feedback, and critical loop damping. | Watch Episode 10 |
Episode 11 | From Wi-Fi to Power Amplifiers | Analyzing binary-weighted current source DACs, current mirrors, inductive kickback spikes ($V = L \frac{di}{dt}$), and flyback diode clamping loops. | Watch Episode 11 |
Episode 12 | From USB Cables to Equalizers | Exploring tactile feedback paradigms, dynamic inverting op-amps, time-multiplexed sensor matrices, component calibration, and thermal mapping. | Watch Episode 12 |
Episode 13 | From Solar Panels to Energy Harvesters | Deconstructing biological cardiac signaling, skin-electrode impedance loading, 60 Hz common-mode noise cancellation, and differential instrumentation stages. | Watch Episode 13 |
Episode 14 | From Cameras to Image Sensors | Stepping inside camera pixel architecture to map PN junction photodiode sampling loops, high-impedance source followers, and column-parallel ADCs. | Watch Episode 14 |
Episode 15 | From Laptops to Thermal Sensors | Discovering PTAT (Proportional to Absolute Temperature) voltage generation, logarithmic diode subtraction tricks, and CPU thermal throttling control loops. | Watch Episode 15 |
Episode 16 | From Touchscreens to Switched-Capacitor Circuits | How high-frequency cable attenuation distorts digital signals, and how receiver source-degenerated gain stages (CTLE) restore digital eye diagrams. | Watch Episode 16 |
Episode 17 | From Artificial Skin to Charge Amplifiers | Deconstructing long-distance internet infrastructure, multiplexer trees (MUX), laser drivers, and high-speed photodiode optical receivers. | Watch Episode 17 |
Episode 18 | From Data Centers to Transimpedance Amplifiers | Prof. Razavi demonstrates how Miller’s Theorem reduces input resistance in CMOS Transimpedance Amplifiers to boost photodiode bandwidth up to 22 GHz. | Watch Episode 18 |
Episode 19 | From Phones to Infrared | Exploring IR LED physics, MOSFET driver switches, carrier modulation for noise rejection, and zero-light 3D facial depth profiling. | Watch Episode 19 |
Episode 20 | From Radars to Oscillators | In the series finale, Prof. Razavi explains how 77 GHz automotive radars measure distance using round-trip wave delays, MOSFET mixers, and local oscillators. | Watch Episode 20 |