A Spliceable Driving System Design for Digital Microfluidics Platform Based on Indium Tin Oxide Substrate

摘要

In recent years, Digital Microfluidics (DMF) technology has become a mainstream technology used in lab on a chip (LOC) applications. In order to make the DMF device more convenient, simple and adaptable for meeting requirements of function expansion, we designed and produced a miniaturized and spliceable DMF driving system. In hardware, the indium tin oxide (ITO) glass was used as the substrate, an 8x8 square electrode array DMF open operating platform was fabricated by using a photolithography process, a STM32 single chip was used as a main control chip in the driving system, and two HV513 chips was used as a high-voltage parallel output driving module. In software, the C language was used to design programs, and the operation of the droplet path can be set in the driving module by the program. Then, multiple splicing driving modules can realize communication control and interaction capabilities for driving droplets continuously by a functional serial port module. Experimental results showed that an effective driving voltage which can be provided by the system was 5-250 V, the highest communication rate can reach 4.5 Mbps, and the output timing and frequency can be adjusted. The moving speed of the droplets on a 3x3 mm(2) electrode array can reach 15 mm/s, and the moving speed of the droplets on a 1.5x1.5 mm(2) electrode array can reach 35 mm/s.