Integrated Functional and Washing Routing Optimization for Cross-Contamination Removal in Digital Microfluidic Biochips

Digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) are gaining increasing attention with promising applications for automating and miniaturizing laboratory procedures in biochemistry. In DMFBs, cross-contamination of droplets with different biomolecules is a major issue, which causes significant errors in bioass...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on computer-aided design of integrated circuits and systems 2016-08, Vol.35 (8), p.1283-1296
Main Authors: Yao, Hailong, Wang, Qin, Shen, Yiren, Ho, Tsung-Yi, Cai, Yici
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biochemistry
Biochips
Contamination
Cross-contamination
Digital
digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs)
droplet routing
Droplets
Electrodes
Electronic mail
Indium tin oxide
Mathematical analysis
Microfluidics
Routing
Spots
Timing
Washing
washing capacity constraint
Yttrium
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Summary:Digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) are gaining increasing attention with promising applications for automating and miniaturizing laboratory procedures in biochemistry. In DMFBs, cross-contamination of droplets with different biomolecules is a major issue, which causes significant errors in bioassays. Washing operations are introduced to clean the cross-contamination spots. However, existing works have oversimplified assumptions on the washing behavior, which either assume infinite washing capacity, or ignore the routing conflicts between functional and washing droplets. This paper proposes the first integrated functional and washing droplet routing flow, which considers practical issues including the finite washing capacity constraint, and the routing conflicts between functional and washing droplets. Washing droplets of different sizes are also proposed to wash the congested cross-contamination spots. Effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by real-life biochemical applications.
ISSN:0278-0070
1937-4151
DOI:10.1109/TCAD.2015.2504397