General purpose cross-referencing Microfluidic Biochip with reduced pin-count

Abstract

The number of control pins used is a major factor affecting the manufacturing cost of Digital Microfluidic Biochip (DMFB). Pin-count on a DMFB can be reduced by sharing of control pins between electrodes. Most existing works on reducing pin-count are problem specific. Problem specific optimizations result in DMFB that can only perform certain specific bioassays. Cross-Referencing DMFB has a full array layout that is fully reconfigurable for any bioassay. Conventional Cross-Referencing DMFB uses m + n number of pins. We have devised a non-problem specific pin assignment methodology that uses only √2(√m + √n) number of pins. The resulting DMFB are still fully reconfigurable. We have developed a droplet router specifically for cross-referencing DMFB with shared control pins. All real bioassay tested can be routed using a fixed and problem independent control pin mapping. Reduction on pin count ranges from 50% to 67%.