Cross-reference EWOD driving scheme and cross-contamination aware net placement technique for MEDA based DMFBs

Abstract

Droplet based digital microfluidics is a popular emerging technology for laboratory experiments. However, certain limitations exist in specific cases for implementation that require further enhancement. Pin-count minimization and cross-contamination avoidance between droplets of different bio-molecules during droplet routing are primary design challenges for biochips. A competent architecture namely Microelectrode Dot Array (MEDA) has recently been introduced as a new highly scalable, field programmable and reconfigurable dot array architecture which allows dynamic configuration. This work considers the cross contamination problems in pin constrained biochips based on MEDA architecture. In order to reduce the cross-contamination problem, in this work we present a MEDA architecture based cross-reference driving scheme that allows simultaneous driving of multiple droplets and thereby propose a suitable net placement technique applicable for MEDA architecture. The objectives of this proposed technique include reducing the crossovers with intelligent collision avoidance, minimizing the overall routing time and increasing grouping number to reduce the total pin-count. Simulation results thus presented in this paper indicate the efficiency of our algorithm for practical bioassays.