ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the three different reconfiguration schemes, namely local reconfiguration, partial reconfiguration, and full reconfiguration that can be applied to digital microfluidic biochips. It also discusses the various defect/fault tolerance issues. The chapter examines the proposed reconfiguration techniques using a set of real-life bioassays. If some primary cell in the module is rendered defective, reconfiguration can be carried out by utilizing the spare cells to bypass the faulty one. Partial reconfiguration technique has been introduced in the discussion of module placement for digital microfluidic biochips. As in local reconfiguration, partial reconfiguration only targets the module containing the faulty cell and leaves other aspects of the microfluidic configuration unchanged. While local reconfiguration and partial reconfiguration are suitable for dynamic online reconfiguration during field operation of digital microfluidic biochips to ensure high reliability, full reconfiguration can be used as an offline reconfiguration technique that is applied after biochip manufacture to enhance yield.
