Design Automation for Continuous-Flow Lab-on-a-Chip Systems: A One-Pass Paradigm

Xing Huang, Youlin Pan, Zhen Chen, Wenzhong Guo, Lu Wang, Qingshan Li, Robert Wille, Tsung-Yi Ho, Ulf Schlichtmann

Abstract: Owing to the high complexity of chip architecture and assay protocol, considerable effort has been directed toward the design automation of continuous-flow microfluidics over the past decade. Existing methods, however, perform the corresponding design tasks, including binding, scheduling, placement, and routing separately, leading to serious gaps between different steps and potentially even cause design failure. To overcome these drawbacks, in this article, we propose a one-pass design paradigm for continuous-flow microfluidic lab-on-a-chip systems, integrating all the design steps into an “organic whole,” which has never been considered in prior work. With the proposed paradigm, all the design tasks can be synchronized seamlessly and performed in a combined manner, thereby eliminating the gaps between design steps. Consequently, optimized biochip architectures can be generated without any design adjustments and modifications. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed automation flows.