Integrated control-path design and error recovery in the synthesis of digital microfluidic lab-on-chip

Abstract

Recent advances in digital microfluidics have led to tremendous interest in miniaturized lab-on-chip devices for biochemical analysis. Synthesis tools have also emerged for the automated design of lab-on-chip from the specifications of laboratory protocols. However, none of these tools consider control flow or address the problem of recovering from fluidic errors that can occur during on-chip bioassay execution. We present a synthesis method that incorporates control paths and an error-recovery mechanism in the design of a digital microfluidic lab-on-chip. Based on error-propagation estimates, we determine the best locations for fluidic checkpoints during biochip synthesis. A microcontroller coordinates the implementation of the control-flow-based bioassay by intercepting the synthesis results that are mapped to the software programs. Real-life bioassay applications are used as case studies to evaluate the proposed design method. For a representative protein assay, compared to a baseline chip design, the biochip with a control path can reduce the completion time by 30% when errors occur during the implementation of the bioassay.