A Droplet-Manipulation Method for Achieving High-Throughput in Cross-Referencing-Based Digital Microfluidic Biochips

作者：Xu Tao^*; Chakrabarty Krishnendu

来源：IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, 2008, 27(11): 1905-1917.

DOI：10.1109/TCAD.2008.2006086

• Bioassays
• droplet-based microfluidics
• droplet routing
• lab-on-chip
• physical design

Digital microfluidic biochips are revolutionizing high-throughput DNA, immunoassays, and clinical diagnostics. As high-throughput bioassays are mapped to digital microfluidic platforms, the need for design automation techniques for pin-constrained biochips is being increasingly felt. However, most prior work on biochips computer-aided design has assumed independent control of the underlying electrodes using a large number of (electrical) input pins. We propose a droplet-manipulation method based on a "cross-referencing" addressing method that uses "row" and "columns" to access electrodes. By mapping the droplet-movement problem on a cross-referenced chip to the clique-partitioning problem from graph theory, the proposed method allows simultaneous movement of a large number of droplets on a microfluidic array. Concurrency is enhanced through the use of an efficient scheduling algorithm that determines the order in which groups of droplets are moved. The proposed design-automation method facilitates high-throughput applications on a pin-constrained biochip, and it is evaluated using random synthetic benchmarks and a set of multiplexed bioassays.

• 出版日期2008-11