How to choose laboratory consumables? Which material is best to use?

 Commonly used pipette tips, pipettes, PCR tube plates, etc. in general laboratories are made of polypropylene. Cell culture plates/cell culture flasks, enzyme plates or chemiluminescent plates are generally made of polystyrene, while centrifuge tubes are made of polypropylene. There may be many types. Take centrifuge tubes as an example to see what characteristics these different plastic materials have.

Plastic centrifuge tubes are generally made of PP (polypropylene), PC (polycarbonate), PE (polyethylene) and other materials.

The performance of PP pipes is relatively good. Plastic centrifuge tubes are transparent or translucent, allowing you to visually see the centrifugation status of the sample, but they are easily deformed and have poor corrosion resistance to organic solvents, so their service life is short.

1.PP (polypropylene)

Translucent, with good chemical and temperature stability, but it will become brittle at low temperatures, so do not centrifuge below 4°C.

2.PC (polycarbonate)

It has good transparency and high hardness, and can be sterilized at high temperatures, but it is not resistant to strong acids and alkalis and some organic solvents such as alcohol. Mainly used for ultra-high-speed centrifugation above 50,000 rpm.

3.PE (polyethylene)

opaque. It does not react with acetone, acetic acid, hydrochloric acid, etc., is relatively stable, and easily softens at high temperatures.

4.PA (polyamide)

This material is a polymer made of PP and PE. It is translucent, has very stable chemical properties, and is not resistant to high temperatures.

5.PS (polystyrene)

It is transparent, has high hardness, and is stable to most aqueous solutions, but will be corroded by a variety of organic substances. It is mostly used for low-speed centrifugation and is generally used once.

PF (polyfluoride): translucent and can be used at low temperatures. If the replicas rolex experimental environment is -100℃-140℃, you can use centrifuge tubes made of this material.

6.CAB (cellulose butyl acetate)

Transparent, it can be used for gradient determination of dilute acids, alkalis, salts, alcohol, and sucrose.

Therefore, it is necessary to choose experimental consumables made of appropriate materials according to different experimental requirements. Otherwise, leakage, rupture, etc. may occur, losing valuable experimental samples, and sometimes causing damage to expensive experimental equipment.