Design Automation and Testing of MEDA-Based Digital Microfluidic Biochips: A Brief Survey

ABSTRACT

In recent years, application of digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) in an extended range, suffers from a few limitations namely (a) flexibility on droplet size (b) requirement of special fabrication process (c) need for integrated sensor systems for real-time detection. To overcome these challenging issues, a DMFB based new advanced microelectrode dot array architecture (MEDA) with advanced characteristics such as field programmability, higher reconfigurability and scalability has been introduced. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of MEDA-based DMFBs, a review on fluidic level synthesis as well as chip-level design to solve problems such as malfunctioning microelectrodes, droplet classification, system automation, biomedical detection and surface flatness testing, followed by a brief description on fault Modeling, testing and error recovery technique on MEDA architecture. Finally, the survey concludes with suggestions for future advancement possibilities in the areas of development of MEDA-based Biochips.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital Microfluidics
• Microelectrode-dot-array (MEDA) architecture
• EWOD
• Synthesis
• Testing
• FPLOC
• Lab on CMOS

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pampa Howladar

Pampa Howladar completed her BTech in information technology from Govt. College of Engineering & Ceramic Technology under MACAUT University. She received MTech in VLSI design from Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in information technology in the area of design and optimization of digital microfluidic biochips on microelectrode-dot-array architecture in Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, India. Her research interests are digital microfluidic biochips, embedded systems. Email: [email protected]

Pranab Roy

Pranab Roy is currently Assistant professor at School of VLSI Technology, IIEST, Shibpur, India. He completed his graduation in Marine Engineering from MERI, Calcutta and worked as senior marine engineer officer on board ships. He completed MTech in information technology from Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur. He also completed PhD (Engineering) from IIEST, Shibpur, India. His areas of research interests include digital microfluidics, VLSI design automation, embedded systems, cognitive computing, graph theory and algorithms.

Hafizur Rahaman

Hafizur Rahaman (SM 2010) is full professor of Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, India. He visited University of Bristol, United Kingdom as Post Doctoral Research Fellow under INSA-Royal Society fellowship during 2006-2007. During 2008-2009, he received Royal Society International Fellowship Award to carry out one year advanced research at University of Bristol, United Kingdom. During 2013-2015, he received DST-DAAD research fellowship to visit university of Bremen as Visiting Professor. His research interests include design and testing of integrated circuits, nano-biochips and emerging nanotechnologies including reversible quantum computing. He has published more than 300 research articles in archival journals and refereed conference procedings. He leads the VLSI design and test group at IIEST, Shibpur, India. He is a Member of VSI, ACM, Sr. Member-the IEEE, Fellow-IE (I). Email: [email protected]