New perspectives and opportunities from the wild west of microelectronic biochips

The application of microelectronics to bioanalysis is an emerging field which holds great promise. From the standpoint of electronic and system design, biochips imply a radical change of perspective, since new, completely different constraints emerge, while other usual constraints can be relaxed. While electronic parts of the system can rely on the usual established design-flow, fluidic and packaging design calls for a new approach which relies significantly on experiments. We make some general considerations based on our experience in the development of biochips for cell analysis.