Volume-oriented sample preparation for reactant minimization on flow-based microfluidic biochips with multi-segment mixers

Sample preparation is one of essential processes in most biochemical reactions. In this process, raw reactants are diluted to achieve given target concentrations. So far, most of existing sample preparation techniques only consider mixing of two source solutions under the (1:1) mixing model. In this paper, we propose the first sample preparation algorithm VOSPA that not only blends several (≥ 2) solutions in a dilution operation but also allows various mixing models on flow-based microfluidic biochips with multi-segment mixers. VOSPA is a volume-oriented sample preparation algorithm that enables segment-based intermediate solution reuse for better reactant minimization. Experimental results show that VOSPA can lower the reactant consumption and operation count by 72% and 59% as compared to the baseline bit-scanning method if an 8-segment mixer is used. Moreover, VOSPA outperforms an optimal algorithm, which merely allows the use of (1:1) mixing model; the reactant usage and operation count can be further reduced by 37% and 76%.