Guide to Different Laboratory Pipette Tips

What are pipette tips?

Pipette tips are disposable accessories for pipettes used to transfer liquids accurately. They come in various sizes, materials, and types, such as standard, low-adhesion, filtered, and extended-length tips.

Pipette tips are crucial in scientific labs and widely used across life sciences, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and molecular biology. Due to their diverse applications, regulatory bodies worldwide set quality standards to ensure accuracy and reliability in research. Cotaus, a renowned manufacturer of biological consumables in China, produces high-quality pipette tips that are ISO, CE, and FDA certified, ensuring reliability and compliance for scientific research.

Today, let's explore the various types of pipette tips, to understand their unique features and applications in precise liquid handling.

Different types of pipette tips

1. Standard (Universal) Pipette Tips

Standard pipette tips, also known as universal tips, are usually made of high-quality, autoclavable polypropylene. They are the most common type of pipette accessory used in laboratories with a variety of performance requirements that range from high accuracy to reagent dispensing with greater tolerance, designed to fit a wide range of pipette brands and models, making them versatile and suitable for general liquid handling tasks. Available in both sterile and non-sterile versions depending on the specific needs of the experiment.

Non-Sterile vs. Sterile Tips

Non-Sterile Tips: These can be used for general lab procedures where sterility isn't critical. They are cost-effective for routine tasks or non-sensitive samples.

Sterile Tips: They are essential for sensitive applications like microbiology, molecular biology, and clinical testing, as they are pre-sterilized and certified free from contaminants such as RNase, DNase, and endotoxins etc. It might seem appealing to autoclave non-sterile tips onto sterile ones, but autoclaving might eliminate the risk of contamination caused by living organisms, this does not necessarily mean that the tips would be free of RNase and DNase.

If you need to perform sensitive assays where this is required, you should opt for sterile pipette tips from a manufacturer who can certify that their tips are free of RNase and DNase.

Cotaus standard tips come in various volume sizes (e.g., 10 µL, 20 µL, 50 µL, 100 µL, 200 µL, 300 µL, 1000 µL).

2. Filter vs Non-FilterTips

Filter Tips: Filtered tips feature a small barrier, typically made from a hydrophobic material, located inside the tip. This filter prevents cross-contamination between samples and the pipette. Filter tips are generally meant for use in specific kinds of tests. For instance, if the sample is corrosive, volatile, or highly viscous in nature, it can potentially damage the pipette. In such cases, filter tips are recommended.

Every time you aspirate liquid, aerosols are generated inside the pipette tip. If you don’t use filter tips, these aerosols are likely to contaminate your pipette and the subsequent samples, affecting your experimental results. Therefore, filter tips are highly cost-effective in precision experiments.

Non-filter Tips: Non-filter tips are the most commonly used pipette tips in laboratories as they are less expensive than filter tips. They are best suited for samples that are not prone to contamination and unlikely to damage the pipette. such as isolating plasmid DNA, and loading agarose gels, among others. However, they lack the contamination-preventing benefits of filter tips, making them less suitable for critical or sensitive experiments.

3. Low Retention vs Non-Low Retention Tips (Standard)

Low retention pipette tips are specially designed to minimize liquid retention inside the tip, ensuring more accurate and efficient sample transfer. These tips are ideal for working with viscous, sticky, or precious liquids where minimizing sample loss is critical. However, they are more costly than standard tips, these tips are ideal for collecting samples during PCR, protein purification, SDS-PAGE, cloning, DNA and RNA applications as well as various protein analysis applications.

4. Short Tips vs. Extended Length

Short pipette tips are designed for use in multi-well plates, such as 1536 or 384-well formats, where their smaller size helps target narrow wells accurately. These tips also improve ergonomics by allowing pipetting closer to the bench, reducing arm strain during repetitive tasks. Ideal for high-throughput screening and enhancing laboratory comfort.

Extended length pipette tips are longer than standard tips, providing better contamination control by allowing access to the bottom of vessels while minimizing contact with the container. These tips are ideal for use with lab equipment like deep well blocks and microcentrifuge tubes, ensuring precise liquid handling in hard-to-reach areas.

5. Wide-bore Pipette Tips

Wide-bore pipette tips feature a distal end with an orifice up to 70% larger than standard tips, the characteristic is particularly useful for eliminating cell shearing and flow resistance. Making them ideal for handling difficult-to-pipette samples like fragile cell lines, genomic DNA, hepatocytes, hybridomas, and other highly viscous liquids. These tips reduce mechanical shearing forces, preventing cell fragmentation and ensuring higher cell viability and plating efficiency.

6. Robotic Pipette Tips

Robotic pipette tips are designed for use with a variety of automated liquid handling systems and pipetting robots. These tips ensure compatibility with brands (Hamilton, Beckman, Agilent, Tecan, etc.) in laboratory automation, enhancing precision and efficiency in high-throughput applications. Robotic tips are regulated under tighter tolerances compared to manual pipette tips. These auto-robotic tips ensure high precision, accuracy, and efficiency in high-throughput applications across various fields, including genomics, proteomics, and pharmaceutical research.

Example:

Conductive pipette tips are specialized tips used in automated pipetting systems that are designed to minimize electrostatic charge buildup during liquid handling. These tips are essential for applications where electrostatic interference could affect sample integrity or the precision of automated liquid handling systems.

7. Specialized Pipette Tips

Certain applications require unique pipette tip designs for specific tasks.

Examples:

PCR Tips: Tips designed for use in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) processes to prevent contamination from amplified DNA.
Cryogenic Tips: Specifically designed for use with ultra-low temperatures and often come in a robust, durable construction to handle frozen samples.

Conclusion

The choice of pipette tips depends on the nature of the experiment and the type of pipette being used. Whether it's for general liquid handling, preventing contamination, or working with delicate or expensive samples, understanding the types and characteristics of pipette tips ensures accurate and efficient liquid transfer in the laboratory. Always select the appropriate pipette tip for your specific research needs to ensure optimal results and reliability.