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Drying Solutions in Microtitre Plates
Not very Conductive at all
Microtitre plates do not conduct heat well at all. It should be said straight away; this is perhaps the most
important aspect of a Microtitre plate (MTP), when it comes to drying samples. If they were made of
aluminium, for example, things would be very different.
The implications of the poor conductivity are manifold:
• If you are using a safe approach to drying, (see next page) then you will need to conduct heat into the
MTP from the swing. The shape of the MTP can play a crucial part in this. The contact between the
individual wells and the swing will define how well heat flows into the MTP. (See page 4 for more details
of how to optimise this)
• Samples will often dry at very different rates, based on positions in the MTP. In general, edge and
corner wells dry first (because they have fewer cold neighbours as they are drying), centre wells dry
last. In contrast, an aluminium block with several tubes in will sit at very much the same temperature all
over the block because it is so conductive, and all tubes will dry in similar times (if they have similar
substances in)
• Mixtures prone to freezing (e.g. HPLC fractions featuring a volatile solvent plus water, see February
newsletter) will do so worst in a sample holder that has poor conductivity