Title: Testing Microfluidic Fully Programmable Valve Arrays (FPVAs),
Abstract: Fully Programmable Valve Array (FPVA) has emerged as a new architecture for
the next-generation flow-based microfluidic biochips. This 2D-array consists of
regularly-arranged valves, which can be dynamically configured by users to
realize microfluidic devices of different shapes and sizes as well as
interconnections. Additionally, the regularity of the underlying structure
renders FPVAs easier to integrate on a tiny chip. However, these arrays may
suffer from various manufacturing defects such as blockage and leakage in
control and flow channels. Unfortunately, no efficient method is yet known for
testing such a general-purpose architecture. In this paper, we present a novel
formulation using the concept of flow paths and cut-sets, and describe an
ILP-based hierarchical strategy for generating compact test sets that can
detect multiple faults in FPVAs. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of
the proposed method in detecting manufacturing faults with only a small number
of test vectors.