Digital microfluidic operations on micro-electrode array architecture

As digital microfluidics-based biochips find more applications, their complexity is expected to increase significantly due to the trend of multiple and concurrent assays on the chip. There is a pressing need to deliver a top-down design methodology that the biochip designer can leverage the same level of computer aided design support as the semiconductor industry now does. Moreover, as microelectronics fabrication technology scaling and integrated device performance improving, it is expected that these microfluidic biochips will be integrated with microelectronic components in next-generation system-on-chip designs. This paper presents a novel electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) based “micro-electrode array architecture” that fosters a development path for hierarchical top-down design approach for digital microfluidics, and also allows easy integration of microfluidics and microelectronics on a single chip. In addition, this novel architecture provides a number of advantages and flexibilities over the conventional digital microfluidics such as dynamic activations of variable-sized electrodes and dynamic manipulations of multiple droplets.