A pipetting apparatus and method for pulsed dispensing of small metered-liquid doses of no more than 1 μl. The apparatus includes a pipetting conduit at least partly filled with working gas, a pressure-modifying apparatus for modifying the pressure of the working gas, and a control apparatus for applying control to the pressure-modifying apparatus. The control apparatus can control the pressure-modifying apparatus so as to generate in the pipetting conduit, with respect to a reference holding pressure in the pipetting conduit which is necessary for immovable holding of the metered-liquid quantity, an overpressure pulse having a pulse duration of no more than 40 ms.

A pipette calibration and volume offset mechanism. The calibration and volume offset mechanism is provided to facilitate user selectable calibration or volume offset operations of a pipette to which the calibration and volume offset mechanism is installed, through axial displacement of a threaded element that effectively moves the home position of the pipette. An offset counter of the calibration and volume offset mechanism is rotationally coupled to the threaded element during a volume offset operation to indicate offset magnitude, but decoupled from threaded element during a calibration or recalibration operation.

An automatic liquid transfer optimization pipetting apparatus and method is disclosed. Namely, a liquid handling apparatus includes a pump supplying a nozzle (i.e., a pipette tip) via a conduit, one or more pressure sensors, and an electronic controller, and wherein the pipette tip is submerged in a liquid. Further, a method of automatic liquid transfer optimization pipetting includes the steps of actuating the pump to move a designated volume of liquid and then allowing the system to settle to a steady state after completion of pump actuation.

A dosing device is proposed which is designed for dosed output of a fluid. The dosing device has a block-shaped channel body, through which a dosing channel system passes. The dosing channel system has a fluid infeed opening and a plurality of fluid output openings. The fluid output openings are formed by the channel apertures of narrowed output sections of a plurality of output channels of the dosing channel system. The entire dosing channel system, including the output channels, is formed in the block-shaped channel body. The dosing channel system is preferably structured such that the flow velocity of the fluid channelled through during operation is at least substantially the same throughout with the exception of in the output sections of the output channels.

Systems and methods applicable, for instance, to pipette robots. A pipette robot can perform one or more operations regarding deck calibration, one or more operations regarding pipette tip/probe calibration, one or more operations regarding pipette tip pick up, and/or one or more operations regarding tip ejection.

A flow cell that includes (a) a gasket interposed between a first substrate and a second substrate, wherein the gasket, the first substrate and the second substrate are impermeable to aqueous liquid and liquid adhesive, wherein the gasket has a footprint on the first substrate that delineates a channel for containing the aqueous liquid; (b) a via in the gasket, the via containing a solidified liquid adhesive that bonds the first substrate to the second substrate, wherein the solidified liquid adhesive in the via is separated from the channel by the gasket; and (c) a channel port connecting the channel to the exterior of the flow cell, wherein the channel port is permeable to the aqueous liquid.

An automated liquid handling system includes a transfer robot unit, a handling module, and a fixing unit which is coupled to a head of the robot unit and on which a pipette assembly is to be mounted, wherein the handling module is provided with a mounting part detachably mounted on the fixing unit. The fixing unit includes a body part, a fixing part hook formed at an upper portion of one side of the body part and a lower protrusion disposed at a lower portion of the one side of the body part, the mounting part includes a body, a movable hook part formed at an upper portion of one side of the body and a lower groove formed at a lower portion of the one side of the body to correspond to the lower protrusion, a catching step is formed at the lower groove, and the lower protrusion extends from the lower portion of the one side of the body part to support the catching step from below, and the movable hook part is hook-coupled to a fixing unit hook.

Multivolume liquid pipettes with nested plunger and vacuum chamber configurations and methods of using such pipettes are disclosed herein. These pipettes typically include a body and a fluid displacement assembly with a small plunger element slideably received within a larger plunger element, each movable within a vacuum chamber for the precise and accurate control of the displacement of fluid, such as air. In turn, this allows for a single device to aspirate and dispense a broad range of liquids in a dynamic, accurate, and precise manner. In addition, the devices disclosed herein may also include a multi-tiered spring-loaded ejection mechanism to allow the user to use and eject pipette tips of different sizes.

Two or more micropipettes are used to increase a microinjection throughput in an automated system for microinjecting adherent cells on a Petri dish. In the system, a motorized stage carrying the Petri dish sequentially visits the cells according to an optimized injection sequence. The sequence is selected by minimizing a total distance traveled by the motorized stage such that each cell is visited once by one of the micropipettes. Using multiple micropipettes advantageously reduces the minimized total distance over using a single micropipette to thereby increase the throughput. The optimized injection sequence is obtained by solving an equality-generalized traveling salesman problem. Each micropipette is mounted on a motorized micromanipulator. The motorized stage and motorized micromanipulators operate coordinately that each micromanipulator goes down or up during movement of the motorized stage to compensate for unevenness between a focus plane and a moving trajectory of the motorized stage.

An integrated nucleic acid processing apparatus includes a first operation area, a second operation area and a separation wall. The first operation area includes multiple carrying boards for placing objects and reagents for processing nucleic acids in samples, and multiple operation modules for performing operations of nucleic acid processing. The second operation area includes two extraction regions for respectively performing nucleic acid extractions. The separation wall separates the first operation area from the second operation area and includes two openable door sheets spatially corresponding to the two extraction regions. Nucleic acid extraction plates can be moved from the first operation area to the second operation area by means of the carrying boards as the two openable door sheets are opened, and be isolated in the second operation area for performing nucleic acid extractions as the two openable door sheets are closed.