1st Edition

Digital Microfluidic Biochips Design Automation and Optimization

By Krishnendu Chakrabarty, Tao Xu Copyright 2010
    214 Pages 139 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    214 Pages 139 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    Microfluidics-based biochips combine electronics with biochemistry, providing access to new application areas in a wide variety of fields. Continued technological innovations are essential to assuring the future role of these chips in functional diversification in biotech, pharmaceuticals, and other industries.

    Revolutionary guidance on design, optimization, and testing of low-cost, disposable biochips
    Microfluidic Biochips: Design Automation and Optimization comprehensively covers the appropriate design tools and in-system automation methods that will help users adapt to new technology and progress in chip design and manufacturing. Based on results from several Duke University research projects on design automation for biochips, this book uses real-life bioassays as examples to lay out an automated design flow for creating microfluidic biochips. It also develops solutions to the unique problems associated with that process.

    Highlights the design of the protein crystallization chip to illustrate the benefits of automated design flow
    In addition to covering automated design, the authors provide a detailed methodology for the testing, use, and optimization of robust, cost-efficient, manufacturable digital microfluidic systems used in protein crystallization and other areas. The invaluable tools and practices presented here will help readers to:

    • Address optimization problems related to layout, synthesis, droplet routing, and testing for digital microfluidic biochips
    • Make routing-aware, architectural-level design choices and defect-tolerant physical design decisions simultaneously
    • Achieve the optimization goal, which includes minimizing time-to-response, chip area, and test complexity
    • Effectively deal with practical issues such as defects, fabrication cost, physical constraints, and application-driven design

    The authors present specialized pin-constrained design techniques for making biochips with a focus on cost and disposability. They also discuss chip testing to ensure dependability, which is key to optimizing safety-critical applications such as point-of-care medical diagnostics, on-chip DNA analysis, automated drug discovery, air-quality monitoring, and food-safety testing. This book is an optimal reference for academic and industrial researchers in the areas of digital microfluidic biochips and electronic design automation.

    Introduction

    Digital Microfluidic Technology

    Synthesis, Testing, and Pin-Constrained Design Techniques

    Protein Crystallization

    Book Outline

    Defect-Tolerant and Routing-Aware Synthesis

    Background

    Routing-Aware Synthesis

    Defect-Tolerant Synthesis

    Simulations Results

    Chapter Summary and Conclusions

    Pin-Constrained Biochip Design

    Droplet-Trace-Based Array-Partitioning

    Cross-Referencing-Based Droplet Manipulation Method

    Broadcast-Addressing Method

    Chapter Summary and Conclusion

    Testing and Diagnosis

    Parallel Scan-like Test

    Diagnosis of Multiple Defects

    Performance Evaluation

    Application to Fabricated Biochips

    Functional Test

    Simulation Results

    Chapter Summary and Conclusions

    Design for Testability

    Testability of a Digital Microfluidic Biochip

    Testability-Aware Pin-constrained Chip Design

    Simulation Results

    Chapter Summary and Conclusions

    Application on Protein Crystallization

    Protein Crystallization Chip Design

    Automated Solution Preparation

    Chapter Summary and Conclusions

    Conclusions

    Book Contributions

    New Directions

    References

    Biography

    Krishnendu Chakrabarty is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University and a Chair Professor of Software Theory at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Tao Xu is a DFT Engineer at Cisco Systems, Inc.