title: A programmable and configurable multi-port System-on-Chip for stimulating electrokinetically-driven microfluidic devices.
abstract: Recent research has demonstrated the use of microfluidic devices and electro-kinetics in areas such as medicine, genetics, embryology, epidemiology and pollution analysis, where manipulation of particles suspended in liquid media is required. Micro-fabrication technology has made it possible to increase system complexity and functionality by allowing integration of different processing and analysis stages in a single chip. However, fully integrated and autonomous microfluidic systems supporting ad-hoc stimulation have yet to be developed. This paper presents a flexible, configurable and programmable stimulator for electro-kinetically driven microfluidic devices. The stimulator is a dedicated System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture that generates sine, triangle, and sawtooth signals within a frequency range of 1 Hz to 20 MHz, capable of delivering single, dual, and superimposed waveforms, in a user defined test sequence for a selected time period. The system is designed to be integrated into complete, autonomous Lab-on-Chip, portable or implantable devices. As such, it is expected to help significantly advance current and future research on particle manipulation.
authors.affiliation: Electrical and Computer Engineering department, of the Technologic Institute of Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon 64849, Mexico. martha@itesm.mx
authors.forename: Martha Salome
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Lopez
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gerstlauer
authors.forename: Alfonso
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Avila
authors.forename: Sergio O
authors.initials: SO
authors.lastname: Martinez-Chapa
mesh_terms: D003201:Computers; D004560:Electricity; D007700:Kinetics; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D014584:User-Computer Interface