Parallel Liquid Handling of Low-Volume Samples

A precondition for miniatiuization of the assay volume to a few microliter is the availability of reliable and versatile liquid-handling tools for precise metering and delivery of microliter and nanoliter aliquots of compound solutions, assay reagents, and biological materials. Low-volume liquid handlers in the life sciences utilize a variety of basic microfluidic methods for precise dosage of the aliquot volume being transferred, including  

A microfiuidic well plate that makes use of method 4 is described in Section 2.3 and method 6 is explained in Section 3.1 of this article. Method 5, i.e. the acoustic ejection of a droplet from a meniscus, is described in Ref. 10. The interested reader finds a comprehensive tutorial on the physico-chemistry of fluids in microstruc-tured systems and the basic principles of microfiuidic operations and technologies in Ref. 11. 

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