Broadcast electrode-addressing for pin-constrained multi-functional digital microfluidic biochips

Recent advances in digital microfluidics have enabled lab-on-a-chip devices for DNA sequencing, immunoassays, clinical chemistry, and protein crystallization. Basic operations such as droplet dispensing, mixing, dilution, localized heating, and incubation can be carried out using a two-dimensional array of electrodes and nanoliter volumes of liquid. The number of independent input pins used to control the electrodes in such microfluidic "biochips" is an important cost-driver, especially for disposable PCB devices that are being developed for clinical and point-of-care diagnostics. However, most prior work on biochip design-automation has assumed independent control of the electrodes using a large number of input pins. Another limitation of prior work is that the mapping of control pins to electrodes is only applicable for a specific bioassay. We present a broadcast-addressing-based design technique for pin-constrained multi-functional biochips. The proposed method provides h...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Tao Xu, Krishnendu Chakrabarty
• Keywords: Control Pins, DAC 2008, Design Automation, Independent Input Pins, Protein Dilution Assay