Design Automation and Test Solutions for Digital Microfluidic Biochips

Abstract

Abstract-Microfluidics-based biochips are revolutionizing high-throughput sequencing, parallel immunoassays, blood chemistry for clinical diagnostics, and drug discovery. These devices enable the precise control of nanoliter volumes of biochemical samples and reagents. They combine electronics with biology, and they integrate various bioassay operations, such as sample preparation, analysis, separation, and detection. Compared to conventional laboratory procedures, which are cumbersome and expensive, miniaturized biochips offer the advantages of higher sensitivity, lower cost due to smaller sample and reagent volumes, system integration, and less likelihood of human error. This tutorial paper provides an overview of droplet-based "digital" microfluidic biochips. It describes emerging computer-aided design (CAD) tools for the automated synthesis and optimization of biochips from bioassay protocols. Recent advances in fluidic-operation scheduling, module placement, droplet routing, pin-constrained chip design, and testing are presented. These CAD techniques allow biochip users to concentrate on the development of nanoscale bioassays, leaving chip optimization and implementation details to design-automation tools.

Interpreting Assays with Control Flow on Digital Microfluidic Biochips

“…To use such an external device, one or more droplets are moved to the specified location and are stored in place; the device itself is activated appropriately under control of a human user or a computational device that controls the entire system. These basic operations have proven sufficient to perform a wide variety of assays, such as DNA polymerase chain reactions (PCR), in-vitro diagnostics for clinical pathology, immunoassays [Chakrabarty 2010], protein crystallization , and others. Altogether, assay execution on a DMFB can be viewed as a form of reconfigurable computing, as different cells or groups of cells can be reconfigured to perform different operations throughout the duration of assay execution.…”

Multi-terminal PCB escape routing for digital microfluidic biochips using negotiated congestion

“…A DMFB compiler must schedule, place, and route the DAG onto the device. Due to space limitations, we cannot describe these steps in detail; instead, we refer the interested reader to an appropriate survey paper that comprehensively covers the topic [1].…”

Design Automation for Digital Microfluidic Biochips

“…Similar growth is anticipated in other parts of the world, especially US and Japan. Continuing growth of various applications have dramatically complicated chip/system integration and design complexity [7], [19], [20], rendering traditional manual designs infeasible, especially under time-to-market constraints. Hence, it is necessary to develop high-quality computer-aided-design (CAD) tools for efficient design automation.…”

“…Design automations are expected to reduce the burden associated with manual optimization of bioassays, time-consuming chip designs, and costly testing and maintenance procedures. Moreover, the assistance of CAD tools will facilitate the integration of fluidic components with a microelectronic component in next-generation system-on-chips (SOCs) [6], [7], [19], [20], [46].…”