Design, testing, and applications of digital microfluidics-based biochips

Microfluidics-based biochips offer a promising platform for massively parallel DNA analysis, automated drug discovery, and real-time biomolecular recognition. The first part of this paper introduces readers to digital microfluidics technology. The second part describes a recent technique for the automated design and synthesis of biochips. A clinical diagnostic procedure, namely multiplexed in-vitro diagnostics on human physiological fluids, is used to illustrate the design approach. The third part of the embedded tutorial is focused on test issues. It is important to ensure high reliability and availability of biochips as they are increasingly deployed for safety-critical applications. The tutorial includes a discussion of fault models, catastrophic fault testing, and concurrent test issues.