Routing-aware placement technique for intelligent collision avoidance in digital microfluidic biochips

Abstract

The current advancement in microfluidics and microfabrication technology makes it possible to realize true multifunctional lab-on-chip systems that can replace a real life laboratory system with a miniaturized microsystem. The huge advantages of such systems are that they enable fast, easy-to-use, cost-effective detection methods which find major application in the areas of clinical diagnostics, DNA sequencing, drug discovery and other biochemical analyses and applications. As the design of droplet based microfluidic biochips tends to incorporate concurrent execution of multiple bioassays in a single chip, the design complexity as well as system integration issues begin to pose major challenges. A potential CAD problem in this context is the concurrent routing of droplets in DMFBs. This has direct impact on overall reaction time as well as cell usage and pin requirements (specifically in direct-addressing biochips). In this paper we propose a routing-aware placement algorithm for droplets in a digital microfluidic system with a given prescheduled module arrangement. The objective is to enhance the routing process by intelligent collision avoidance, optimized stalling and detour, which finally results in stark improvement in latest arrival time and resource utilization. The proposed algorithm is tested on benchmark suite I for 2-pin droplets and Benchmark suite III for multipin droplets. The results obtained are quite encouraging. © 2011 IEEE.