Papers Published

1. Zhao, Y; Chakrabarty, K, Synchronization of washing operations with droplet routing for cross-contamination avoidance in digital microfluidic biochips, Proceedings Design Automation Conference (September, 2010), pp. 635-640, ACM Press [doi] .
   (last updated on 2022/12/30)

   Abstract:
   Digital microfluidic biochips are being utilized in many areas of biochemistry and biomedical sciences. Since cross-contamination between droplets of different biomolecules can lead to erroneous outcomes for bioassays, it is essential to avoid cross-contamination during droplet routing. We propose a wash-operation synchronization method to manipulate wash droplets to clean the residue that is left behind by sample and reagent droplets. We also synchronize wash-droplet routing with sample/reagent droplet- routing steps by controlling the arrival order of droplets at cross-contamination sites. The proposed method minimizes droplet- routing time without cross-contamination, and it is especially effective for tight chip-area constraints. A real-life application is used for evaluation. Copyright 2010 ACM.