Microplate

A very common usage is in the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), the basis of most modern medical diagnostic testing in humans and animals.

[2] Each well of a microplate typically holds somewhere between tens of nanolitres[3][4][5][6] to several millilitres of liquid.

For compound storage applications, square wells with close fitting silicone cap-mats are preferred.

Microplates can be stored at low temperatures for long periods, may be heated to increase the rate of solvent evaporation from their wells and can even be heat-sealed with foil or clear film.

Microplates with an embedded layer of filter material were developed in the early 1980s by several companies, and today, there are microplates for just about every application in life science research which involves filtration, separation, optical detection, storage, reaction mixing, cell culture and detection of antimicrobial activity.

[7] The enormous growth in studies of whole live cells has led to an entirely new range of microplate products which are "tissue culture treated" especially for this work.

[8] The most common manufacturing process is injection molding, using materials such as polystyrene, polypropylene and cyclo-olefin for different temperature and chemical resistance needs.

A notable characteristic is that the well array is symmetrical when the plate is rotated 180˚ around its Z-axis (height axis).

Deepwell plates do typically follow a de facto standard height of 44 mm.

The earliest microplate was created in 1951 by a Hungarian, Dr. Gyula Takátsy, who machined six rows of 12 "wells" in Lucite.

[27] However, common usage of the microplate began in the late 1980s when John Liner introduced a molded version.

Other trade names for microplates include Viewplate and Unifilter (introduced in the early 1990s by Polyfiltronics and sold by Packard Instrument, which is now part of PerkinElmer).