Droplet routing in high-level synthesis of configurable digital microfluidic biochips based on microelectrode dot array architecture

Abstract

Droplet-based digital microfluidic lab-on-chips exploiting electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) have been studied over the last decade. With the recent introduction of new highly scalable, reconfigurable and field-programmable microelectrode dot array (MEDA) architecture, there is a compelling need for a new digital microfluidics synthesizer for the new MEDA architecture. Droplet routing is a critical part of the digital microfluidics synthesizer. This paper presents a routing algorithm and the associated performance analysis results. The algorithm is able to route different sizes of reagent and sample droplets simultaneously and also incorporates other characteristics such as diagonal movements and channel-based movements that are specific to the MEDA architecture.