English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Sample preparation is an indispensable component of almost all biochemicalprotocols, and it involves, among others, making dilutions and mixtures offluids in certain ratios. Recent microfluidic technologies offer suitableplatforms for automating dilutions on-chip, and typically on a digitalmicrofluidic biochip (DMFB), a sequence of (1:1) mix-split operations isperformed on fluid droplets to achieve the target concentration factor (CF) ofa sample. An (1:1) mixing model ideally comprises mixing of two unit-volumedroplets followed by a (balanced) splitting into two unit-volumedaughter-droplets. However, a major source of error in fluidic operations isdue to unbalanced splitting, where two unequal-volume droplets are producedfollowing a split. Such volumetric split-errors occurring in differentmix-split steps of the reaction path often cause a significant drift in thetarget-CF of the sample, the precision of which cannot be compromised inlife-critical assays. In order to circumvent this problem, severalerror-recovery or error-tolerant techniques have been proposed recently forDMFBs. Unfortunately, the impact of such fluidic errors on a target-CF and thedynamics of their behavior have not yet been rigorously analyzed. In this work,we investigate the effect of multiple volumetric split-errors on varioustarget-CFs during sample preparation. We also perform a detailed analysis ofthe worst-case scenario, i.e., the condition when the error in a target-CF ismaximized. This analysis may lead to the development of new techniques forerror-tolerant sample preparation with DMFBs without using any sensingoperation.

Dilution with Digital Microfluidic Biochips: How Unbalanced Splits Corrupt Target-Concentration