Ring-VCO-based phase-locked loops for clock generation–design considerations and state-of-the-art

This article overviews the design considerations and state-of-the-art of the ring voltage-controlled oscillator(VCO)-based phase-locked loops(PLLs)for clock generation in different applications.Partic-ularly,the objective of the current work is to evaluate the required PLL performance among the fundamental metrics of power,jitter and area.An in-depth treatment of the mainstream PLL architectures and the associated design techniques enables them to be compared analyt-ically and benchmarked with respect to their figure-of-merit(FoM).The paper also summarizes the key concerns on the selection of dif-ferent circuit techniques to optimize the clock performance under dif-ferent scenarios.

A digital microfluidic system with 3D microstructures for single-cell culture

Despite the precise controllability of droplet samples in digital microfluidic(DMF)systems,their capability in isolating single cells for long-time culture is still limited:typically,only a few cells can be captured on an electrode.Although fabricating small-sized hydrophilic micropatches on an electrode aids single-cell capture,the actuation voltage for droplet transportation has to be significantly raised,resulting in a shorter lifetime for the DMF chip and a larger risk of damaging the cells.In this work,a DMF system with 3D microstructures engineered on-chip is proposed to form semi-closed micro-wells for efficient single-cell isolation and long-time culture.Our optimum results showed that approximately 20%of the micro-wells over a 30×30 array were occupied by isolated single cells.In addition,low-evaporation-temperature oil and surfactant aided the system in achieving a low droplet actuation voltage of 36V,which was 4 times lower than the typical 150 V,minimizing the potential damage to the cells in the droplets and to the DMF chip.To exemplify the technological advances,drug sensitivity tests were run in our DMF system to investigate the cell response of breast cancer cells(MDA-MB-231)and breast normal cells(MCF-10A)to a widely used chemotherapeutic drug,Cisplatin(Cis).The results on-chip were consistent with those screened in conventional 96-well plates.This novel,simple and robust single-cell trapping method has great potential in biological research at the single cell level.