Automated design of pin-constrained digital microfluidic arrays for lab-on-a-chip applications

Microfluidics-based biochips, also referred to as lab-on-a-chip (LoC), are devices that integrate fluid-handling functions such as sample preparation, analysis, separation, and detection. This emerging technology combines electronics with biology to open new application areas such as point-of-care diagnosis, on-chip DNA analysis, and automated drug discovery. We propose a design automation method for pin-constrained LoCs that manipulate nanoliter volumes of discrete droplets on a microfluidic array. In contrast to the direct-addressing scheme that has been studied thus far in the literature, we assign a small number of independent control pins to a large number of electrodes in the LoC, thereby reducing design complexity and product cost. We apply the proposed method to a microfluidic array for a set of multiplexed bioassays.