Flow-Based Compact Droplet Routing Algorithm for MEDA-Based DMFB

For efficient manipulation of Micro Electrode Dot Array-based biochip (MEDA biochip), a droplet routing that completes the movement of droplets in the minimum time steps with a small number of cells used is required. In this paper, a Flow-based Compact Droplet Routing (FCDR) for a single type of droplets that efficiently finds a minimum time step routing that uses a small number of cells is proposed. In FCDR, droplet routing is represented by a flow in a 3D flow graph. FCDR finds a feasible routing by gradually increasing the number of layers of the 3D flow graph until a feasible droplet routing is found, and then obtains a droplet routing that uses a smaller number of cells by assigning edge weight to prevent using cells not frequently used in the droplet routing.