Augmentation of Mixing Quality and Its Analysis Based on Electrode Shape Diversity in Digital Microfluidic Biochips

Abstract

The lab-on-a-chip (LoC) system is principally a replacement of conventional laboratory experiments with microfluidic biochip. A microfluidic biochip with highly reconfigurable and scalable technology and the capability of handling nano- or microliter volume of discrete droplets is identified as Digital Microfluidic Biochip (DMFB). We intend to use regular hexagonal-shaped electrodes instead of traditional square electrodes to furnish the existing technology with more accuracy and enhancements. In this paper, we have focused on the geometrical features of the hexagonal-shaped electrode along with its effect on the DMFB system. Furthermore, in any bioassay synthesis, the mixing of sample and reagent is the most dominant part, and at the same time, dilution is one kind of mixing. Hence, highlighting the active mixing procedure is one of the significant challenges so that the Hexagonal DMFB (HDMFB) forefronts the square-based DMFB system. In this work, we have introduced a systematic study and analysis of hexagonal cell-based mixers and developed the algorithm for the mixer library on the proposed HDMFB system, along with all decisive factors. The computed experimental results are found to be better than the state-of-the-art research works.