• OpenDrop (gaudi.ch/OpenDrop) was highlighted as a promising open-source digital microfluidics platform; participants speculated that scaling it to million-cell arrays should be feasible.

• Single-sided continuous optoelectrowetting (SCOEW) was revisited as a route to high-density droplet control; the 2010 paper describing 0.5 mm a-Si:H, Al electrodes, and Cytop dielectric was cited, but its lack of reproducibility details was criticized.

• Practical SCOEW fabrication challenges were debated: sourcing thin, transparent amorphous-silicon layers, sputtering vs. kitchen-chemistry perovskite coatings, and the risk of high-voltage electrodes disrupting LCD active-matrix electronics.

• LCD and OLED displays were considered as programmable photomasks; pixel pitch (~0.1 mm) and substrate thickness must stay below droplet spacing to avoid optical blur, and flexible films risk coating delamination.

• Selective droplet heating for on-chip PCR was proposed; alternative ideas included laser heating from the reverse side or fixed-geometry etched-glass “ASIC” PCR spirals.

• The “gigaprinter” concept—a tape-based DNA synthesizer capable of ~1 billion bases per run—was outlined: 100 fixed print heads, 1 cm polymer tape, and SCOEW droplet merging driven by either light patterns or static electrodes.

• George Church’s gene-therapy startup raising $1 M was noted (bizjournals.com article), alongside the broader goal of low-cost, open hardware for DNA data storage and gene assembly.

• Links to background reading: diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/microfluidics/ archive and the Nature paper on electrowetting liquid lenses (nature.com/articles/srep06378) were shared for further technical depth.