Layout-Aware Solution Preparation for Biochemical Analysis on a Digital Microfluidic Biochip

A biochemical analysis is based on several laboratory protocols that require repeated mixing of samples with reagents. Sample preparation and analyte identification steps in such bioassays often involve mixing for solution preparation, i.e., various fluids are to be mixed in a certain volumetric ratio in their resulting mixture. We present an efficient approach for automated mixing of three or more fluids on a droplet based digital micro fluidic biochip and design a layout for implementing this algorithm. The proposed method reduces the droplet transportation time from boundary reservoirs to on chip mixers as well as cross-contamination among overlapping droplet routing paths. Simulation of several example solutions reveals encouraging results.