Tutorial T5: Microfluidic Biochips: Connecting VLSI and Embedded Systems to the Life Sciences

Summary form only given. The tutorial offers attendees an opportunity to bridge the semiconductor ICs/system industry with the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries. The tutorial will first describe emerging applications in biology and biochemistry that can benefit from advances in electronic “biochips”. The presenters will next describe technology platforms for accomplishing “biochemistry on a chip”, and introduce the audience to both the droplet-based "digital" microfluidics based on electrowetting actuation and flow-based “continuous” microfluidics based on microvalve technology. Next, the presenters will describe system-level synthesis includes operation scheduling and resource binding algorithms, and physical-level synthesis includes placement and routing optimizations. In this way, the audience will see how a “biochip compiler” can translate protocol descriptions provided by an end user (e.g., a chemist or a nurse at a doctor\´s clinic) to a set of optimized and executable fluidic instructions that will run on the underlying microfluidic platform. Testing techniques will be described to detect faults after manufacture and during field operation. A classification of defects will be presented based on data for fabricated chips. Appropriately fault models will be developed and presented to the audience. On-line and off-line reconfiguration techniques will be presented to bypass faults once they are detected. The problem of mapping a small number of chip pins to a large number of array electrodes will also be covered. Finally, sensor feedback-based cyberphysical adaptation will be covered. A number of case studies based on representative assays and laboratory procedures will be interspersed in appropriate places throughout the tutorial.