Abstract
Digital microfluidics is an emerging class of lab-on-a-chip system. Reliability is a critical performance parameter as these biochips are employed in various safety-critical biomedical applications. With the introduction of highly scalable, reconfigurable and field programmable Micro-Electrode-Dot-Array (MEDA) architecture, the limitation of conventional DMFBs in varying the droplet size/volume in fine grain manner has been resolved. However, the MEDA-based biochips must be adequately tested upon fabrication to guarantee the correctness of bioassays. In this work, an offline testing approach based on Oscillation-Based Testing (OBT) methodology is presented for MEDA-based digital microfluidic biochips. Various simulations were performed for droplet-electrode short fault model involving single and multiple micro-electrodes. Furthermore, the loss of droplet volume due to the presence of defect was analyzed using COMSOL Multiphysics. The simulation results based on PSpice and COMSOL show that the proposed approach is effective for detecting defects in MEDA-based biochips.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alistar M, Pop P, Madsen J (2016) Synthesis of application-specific fault-tolerant digital microfluidic biochip architectures. IEEE Trans Comput Aided Des Integr Circuits and Syst 35(5):764–777
Arabi K, Kaminska B (1997) Testing analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits using oscillation-test method. IEEE Trans Comput Aided Des Integr Circuits Syst 16(7):745–753
Chakrabarty K (2010) Design automation and test solutions for digital microfluidic biochips. IEEE Trans Circuits Syst Regul Pap 57(1):4–17
Chen Z, Teng DH-Y, Wang GC-J, Fan S-K (2011) Droplet routing in high-level synthesis of configurable digital microfluidic biochips based on microelectrode dot array architecture. BioChip J 5(4):343–352
Cooney CG, Chen C-Y, Emerling MR, Nadim A, Sterling JD (2006) Electrowetting droplet microfluidics on a single planar surface. Microfluid Nanofluid 2(5):435–446
Das D, Das S, Biswas K (2010) Effect of electrode geometry on voltage reduction in ewod based devices. In: Proc international conference on systems in medicine and biology (ICSMB). IEEE, pp 371–375
Ernst A, Streule W, Zengerle R, Koltay P (2009) Quantitative volume determination of dispensed nanoliter droplets on the fly. In: Proc. TRANSDUCERS international solid-state sensors, actuators and microsystems conference. IEEE, pp 1750–1753
Fair RB (2007) Digital microfluidics: is a true lab-on-a-chip possible. Microfluid Nanofluid 3(3):245–281
Hu K, Hsu B-N, Madison A, Chakrabarty K, Fair R (2013) Fault detection, real-time error recovery, and experimental demonstration for digital microfluidic biochips. In: Proceedings of the conference on design, automation and test in Europe. EDA Consortium, pp 559–564
Lai KY-T, Yang Y-T, Wang G, Lu Y-W, Lee C-Y (2013) A digital microfluidic processor for biomedical applications. In: Proc. IEEE workshop on signal processing systems (siPS). IEEE, pp 54–58
Li Z, Lai KY-T, Yu P-H, Chakrabarty K, Ho T-Y, Lee C-Y (2016) Built-in self-test for micro-electrode-dot-array digital microfluidic biochips. In: Proc. IEEE international test conference (ITC). IEEE, pp 1–10
Li Z, Lai KY-T, Yu P-H, Chakrabarty K, Pajic M, Ho T-Y, Lee C-Y (2016) Error recovery in a micro-electrode-dot-array digital microfluidic biochip? In: Proceedings of the 35th international conference on computer-aided design. ACM, pp 105
Li Z, Lai KY-T, Yu P-H, Ho T-Y, Chakrabarty K, Lee C-Y (2016) High-level synthesis for micro-electrode-dot-array digital microfluidic biochips. In: Proceedings of the 53rd annual design automation conference. ACM, p 146
Liu Y, Banerjee A, Papautsky I (2014) Precise droplet volume measurement and electrode-based volume metering in digital microfluidics. Microfluid Nanofluid 17(2):295–303
Qais A-G, Richardson A, Liu H, Burd N (2011) An oscillation-based technique for degradation monitoring of sensing and actuation electrodes within microfluidic systems. J Electron Test 27(3):375–387
Ren H, Fair RB, Pollack MG (2004) Automated on-chip droplet dispensing with volume control by electro-wetting actuation and capacitance metering. Sensors Actuators B Chem 98(2):319– 327
Satti S, Shojaei Baghini M (2013) Sensitivity optimization of microfluidic capacitance sensors using comsol multiphysics. In: Proc COMSOL conference, Bangalore, India
Schertzer MJ, Ridha B-M, Sullivan PE (2010) Using capacitance measurements in ewod devices to identify fluid composition and control droplet mixing. Sensors Actuators B Chem 145(1):340–347
Shen H-H, Chung L-Y, Yao D-J (2015) Improving the dielectric properties of an electrowetting-on-dielectric microfluidic device with a low-pressure chemical vapor deposited si3n4 dielectric layer. Biomicrofluidics 9(2):022403
Shukla V, Zain Ali NB, Hussin FA, Zwolinski M (2013) On testing of meda based digital microfluidics biochips. In: Proc 5th asia symposium on quality electronic design (ASQED). IEEE, pp 60–65
Shukla V, Zain Ali NBB, Hussin FA, Hamid NHB (2014) Diagonal testing in digital microfluidics biochips using meda based approach. In: Proc 5th international conference on intelligent and advanced systems (ICIAS), IEEE, pp 1–5
Shukla V, Zain Ali NBB, Hussin FA, Hamid NH, Sheikh MA (2016) Fault modeling and simulation of meda based digital microfluidics biochips. In: 2016 29th international conference on VLSI design and 2016 15th international conference on embedded systems (VLSID), IEEE, pp 469–474
Squires TM, Quake SR (2005) Microfluidics: fluid physics at the nanoliter scale. Rev Mod Phys 77(3):977
Su F, Hwang W, Mukherjee A, Chakrabarty K (2008) Testing and diagnosis of realistic defects in digital microfluidic biochips. In: Emerging nanotechnologies. Springer, pp 287–312
Vergauwe N, Witters D, Atalay YT, Verbruggen B, Vermeir S, Ceyssens F, Puers R, Lammertyn J (2011) Controlling droplet size variability of a digital lab-on-a-chip for improved bio-assay performance. Microfluid Nanofluid 11(1):25–34
Wang G, Teng D, Fan S-K (2011) Digital microfluidic operations on micro-electrode dot array architecture. IET Nanobiotechnol 5(4):152–160
Whitesides GM (2006) The origins and the future of microfluidics. Nature 442(7101):368–373
Xu T, Chakrabarty K (2007) Functional testing of digital microfluidic biochips. In: Proc international test conference, pp. 1–10
Xu T, Chakrabarty K (2007) Parallel scan-like test and multiple-defect diagnosis for digital microfluidic biochips. IEEE Trans Biomed Circuits Syst 1(2):148–158
Xu T, Chakrabarty K (2009) Fault modeling and functional test methods for digital microfluidic biochips. IEEE Trans Biomed Circuits Syst 3(4):241–253
Zoulias E, Varkaraki E, Lymberopoulos N, Christodoulou CN, Karagiorgis GN (2004) A review on water electrolysis. TCJST 4(2):41–71
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by ERGS Grant under ERGS/1/2013/TK02/UTP/02/02. We acknowledge support from Centre for Intelligent Signal and Imaging Research (CISIR), Electrical & Electronic Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Responsible Editor: B. B. Bhattacharya
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Shukla, V., Hussin, F., Hamid, N. et al. Offline Error Detection in MEDA-Based Digital Microfluidic Biochips Using Oscillation-Based Testing Methodology. J Electron Test 33, 621–635 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-017-5678-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-017-5678-5