MiniControl: Synthesis of Continuous-Flow Microfluidics with Strictly Constrained Control Ports

Recent advances in continuous-flow microfluidics have enabled highly integrated lab-on-a-chip biochips. These chips can execute complex biochemical applications precisely and efficiently within a tiny area, but they require a large number of control ports and the corresponding control logic to generate required pressure patterns for flow control, which, consequently, offset their advantages and prevent their wide adoption. In this paper, we propose the first synthesis flow called MiniControl, for continuous-flow microfluidic biochips (CFMBs) under strict constraints for control ports, incorporating high-level synthesis and physical design simultaneously, which has never been considered in previous work. With the maximum number of allowed control ports specified in advance, this synthesis flow generates a biochip architecture with high execution efficiency. Moreover, the overall cost of a CFMB can be reduced and the tradeoff between control logic and execution efficiency of biochemical applications can be evaluated for the first time. Experimental results demonstrate that MiniControl leads to high execution efficiency and low overall platform cost, while satisfying the given control port constraint strictly.