Programmable Microfluidic Devices

In the domain of microfluidic devices, a paradigm shift from application-specific to fully-programmable solutions takes place (a similar development from ASICS to FPGAs has been observed in conventional circuitry). So-called Programmable Microfluidic Devices (PMDs) provide a promising platform in this regard. Here, fluids can be pushed into various reaction vessels whose inflow and outflow is controlled by valves. The regular structure in combination with the flexibility of defining various flow paths through valves allows to realize a vast range of biological or chemical applications by only changing the corresponding valve-control sequence. However, determining a sound valve-control constitutes a non-trivial task. Although first automatic approaches for this problem have recently been proposed, we show that they frequently yield impractical control sequences. In this work, we address this issue by providing a precise definition of the underlying design task. Afterwards, we present complementary solutions (both exact as well as heuristic) and discuss how they guarantee a sound valve-control. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that the proposed solutions are capable of automatically generating a sound valve-control for PMDs.

The implementation (including a README with instructions) can be downloaded by clicking on this link (12.2 MB).

Details of the approach are summarized in the paper entitled "Sound Valve-Control for Programmable Microfluidic Devices".

In case of questions/problems, please contact us through andreas.grimmer@jku.at and robert.wille@tum.de.

If you use the implementation for your research, we would be thankful if you referred to it by citing the following publication:

@inproceedings{grimmer2018sound,
   title={Sound Valve-Control for Programmable Microfluidic Devices},
   author={Grimmer, Andreas and Klepic, Berislav and Ho, Tsung-Yi and Wille, Robert},
   booktitle={Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC), 2018 23nd Asia and South Pacific},
   year={2018}
}