488 research outputs found
Yield Enhancement of Digital Microfluidics-Based Biochips Using Space Redundancy and Local Reconfiguration
As microfluidics-based biochips become more complex, manufacturing yield will
have significant influence on production volume and product cost. We propose an
interstitial redundancy approach to enhance the yield of biochips that are
based on droplet-based microfluidics. In this design method, spare cells are
placed in the interstitial sites within the microfluidic array, and they
replace neighboring faulty cells via local reconfiguration. The proposed design
method is evaluated using a set of concurrent real-life bioassays.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDAA (http://www.edaa.com/
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BioScript: programming safe chemistry on laboratories-on-a-chip
This paper introduces BioScript, a domain-specific language (DSL) for programmable biochemistry which executes on emerging microfluidic platforms. The goal of this research is to provide a simple, intuitive, and type-safe DSL that is accessible to life science practitioners. The novel feature of the language is its syntax, which aims to optimize human readability; the technical contributions of the paper include the BioScript type system and relevant portions of its compiler. The type system ensures that certain types of errors, specific to biochemistry, do not occur, including the interaction of chemicals that may be unsafe. The compiler includes novel optimizations that place biochemical operations to execute concurrently on a spatial 2D array platform on the granularity of a control flow graph, as opposed to individual basic blocks. Results are obtained using both a cycle-accurate microfluidic simulator and a software interface to a real-world platform
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Directed Placement for mVLSI Devices
Continuous-flow microfluidic devices based on integrated channel networks are becoming increasingly prevalent in research in the biological sciences. At present, these devices are physically laid out by hand by domain experts who understand both the underlying technology and the biological functions that will execute on fabricated devices. The lack of a design science that is specific to microfluidic technology creates a substantial barrier to entry. To address this concern, this article introduces Directed Placement, a physical design algorithm that leverages the natural "directedness" in most modern microfluidic designs: fluid enters at designated inputs, flows through a linear or tree-based network of channels and fluidic components, and exits the device at dedicated outputs. Directed placement creates physical layouts that share many principle similarities to those created by domain experts. Directed placement allows components to be placed closer to their neighbors compared to existing layout algorithms based on planar graph embedding or simulated annealing, leading to an average reduction in laid-out fluid channel length of 91% while improving area utilization by 8% on average. Directed placement is compatible with both passive and active microfluidic devices and is compatible with a variety of mainstream manufacturing technologies
Transport or Store? Synthesizing Flow-based Microfluidic Biochips using Distributed Channel Storage
Flow-based microfluidic biochips have attracted much atten- tion in the EDA
community due to their miniaturized size and execution efficiency. Previous
research, however, still follows the traditional computing model with a
dedicated storage unit, which actually becomes a bottleneck of the performance
of bio- chips. In this paper, we propose the first architectural synthe- sis
framework considering distributed storage constructed tem- porarily from
transportation channels to cache fluid samples. Since distributed storage can
be accessed more efficiently than a dedicated storage unit and channels can
switch between the roles of transportation and storage easily, biochips with
this dis- tributed computing architecture can achieve a higher execution
efficiency even with fewer resources. Experimental results con- firm that the
execution efficiency of a bioassay can be improved by up to 28% while the
number of valves in the biochip can be reduced effectively.Comment: ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), June 201
Testing Microfluidic Fully Programmable Valve Arrays (FPVAs)
Fully Programmable Valve Array (FPVA) has emerged as a new architecture for
the next-generation flow-based microfluidic biochips. This 2D-array consists of
regularly-arranged valves, which can be dynamically configured by users to
realize microfluidic devices of different shapes and sizes as well as
interconnections. Additionally, the regularity of the underlying structure
renders FPVAs easier to integrate on a tiny chip. However, these arrays may
suffer from various manufacturing defects such as blockage and leakage in
control and flow channels. Unfortunately, no efficient method is yet known for
testing such a general-purpose architecture. In this paper, we present a novel
formulation using the concept of flow paths and cut-sets, and describe an
ILP-based hierarchical strategy for generating compact test sets that can
detect multiple faults in FPVAs. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of
the proposed method in detecting manufacturing faults with only a small number
of test vectors.Comment: Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE), March 201
Testing microelectronic biofluidic systems
According to the 2005 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, the integration of emerging nondigital CMOS technologies will require radically different test methods, posing a major challenge for designers and test engineers. One such technology is microelectronic fluidic (MEF) arrays, which have rapidly gained importance in many biological, pharmaceutical, and industrial applications. The advantages of these systems, such as operation speed, use of very small amounts of liquid, on-board droplet detection, signal conditioning, and vast digital signal processing, make them very promising. However, testable design of these devices in a mass-production environment is still in its infancy, hampering their low-cost introduction to the market. This article describes analog and digital MEF design and testing method
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