Abstract-Recent research has demonstrated the use of microfluidic devices and electro-kinetics in areas such as medicine, genetics, embryology, epidemiology and pollution analysis, where manipulation of particles suspended in liquid media is required. Micro-fabrication technology has made it possible to increase system complexity and functionality by allowing integration of different processing and analysis stages in a single chip. However, fully integrated and autonomous microfluidic systems supporting ad-hoc stimulation have yet to be developed. This paper presents a flexible, configurable and programmable stimulator for electro-kinetically driven microfluidic devices. The stimulator is a dedicated System-onChip (SoC) architecture that generates sine, triangle, and sawtooth signals within a frequency range of 1Hz to 20 MHz, capable of delivering single, dual, and superimposed waveforms, in a user defined test sequence for a selected time period. The system is designed to be integrated into complete, autonomous Lab-on-Chip, portable or implantable devices. As such, it is expected to help significantly advance current and future research on particle manipulation.
Integrated circuits have been predominantly designed and developed by large firms and manufacturers; nowadays, any electronic engineer should be able to develop specific and innovative low-power designs using available open cores. This chapter presents the design process for a specific chip, beginning with a definition of its function, design considerations, power analysis, performance optimization, and chip optimization. The hardware and software for this circuit were developed for low-power implementation: it includes a processor, memory blocks, ports, buses, and a proposed application program, so it can be used as a starting point for other low-power very-large-scale integration (VLSI) circuits. The chip uses frequency synthesis and configuration parameters to deliver electric signals on a variety of waveforms and patterns. This design can be used in many research fields and application areas, where experiments or portable devices need low-power, programmable, and configurable electric signal generators.
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