Block-Flushing: A Block-based Washing Algorithm for Programmable Microfluidic Devices
Yu-Huei Lin1, Tsung-Yi Ho1,2, Bing Li3 and Ulf Schlichtmann3
1Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
2Institute for Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich
3Chair of Electronic Design Automation, Technical University of Munich
ABSTRACT
Programmable Microfluidic Devices (PMDs) have emerged as a new architecture for next-generation flow-based biochips. These devices can be dynamically reconfigured to execute different bioassays flexibly and efficiently owing to their twodimensional regularly-arranged valve structure. During execution of a bioassay or between the execution of multiple bioassays, some areas on the PMD, however, become contaminated and must be cleaned by washing them with a buffer flow before they are reused. In this paper, we propose a novel block-based washing technique called block flushing. In this method, contaminated areas are first collected according to given patterns and flushed as a whole to increase washing efficiency. Simulation results show that with this technique the proposed method can achieve on average 28% improvement in reducing washing time compared with two other baseline solutions.
