Novel Wire Planning Schemes for Pin Minimization in Digital Microfluidic Biochips

Digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs), a second-generation lab-on-chip device has developed in recent years as a feasible alternative to conventional laboratory procedure for biochemical analysis and diagnostic applications. These devices enable the precise manipulation of nanoliter volumes of biological fluids and chemical reagents within a 2-D rectangular array of electrodes. Increasing number of control pin requirements together with high wire planning complexity becomes a major issue for integrated execution of multiple bioassays within a single DMFB layout. In this paper, we propose new techniques for interconnection wire routing for actuating the electrodes operating at identical time sequence. Here, we propose three different algorithms to develop feasible wire plans for a given layout with an aim to minimize the overall number of control pin count. Multiple actuation on the same pin termed multiphasing is proposed to resolve the issue of wire planning for handling the issue of cross contamination at any particular site. The proposed techniques are implemented in layouts using testbenches for benchmark suite III and selective testbenches for benchmark suite I. The results obtained through simulation show encouraging improvement over contemporary contributions.