Cybermanufacturing: Cloud-Based Incubation Ecosystem for EWOD Digital Microfluidics

Electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) digital microfluidics is a platform where liquids are manipulated (e.g., generated, transported, split, merged) on a chip by only electric signals, leading to various applications, such as displays (Amazon), liquid lens (Varioptics), DNA/RNA sample prep (Illumina), molecular diagnostics (Genmark). However, the progress has been rather slow in practice, limiting the commercialization to only a few product because of two main requirements: (1) cleanroom facilities to fabricate EWOD chips and the ability develop an electronic system to operate the chips and (2) the expertise and experience to design EWOD chips that work reliably for a given application. To eliminate the bottlenecks, we plan to build an cyber manufacturing ecosystem that helps the users design the chip for their application and provides them with the resulting chip and the necessary operating system. Users, such as biologists, chemists, engineers, or even hobbyists, can input their experiment workflow into the cyber system through software wizard that resides in the cloud. The cybermanufacturing system would start EWOD chip design process automatically and send the validated design files to a fabrication foundry. Meanwhile, the cyber system would choose and proper add-on modules and let them assembled with the standard electronic control unit. With the EWOD operating system in hand, the user would continue designing and receiving own EWOD chips. The cybermanufacturing ecosystem may be considered a market place which connect the users with manufacturers by standardizing chip designs and hardware systems. The cyber system would grow by accumulating knowledge as more people use the system and attracting more manufacturers. Once a critical mass is reached, the ecosystem is expected to rapidly grow and democratize the EWOD usage beyond the experts in EWOD, accelerating the scientific discoveries as well as startup commercialization.