Pipettes and Pipette Tips

Bio-Rad carries a full range of pipettes, pipette controllers, and a wide selection of pipette tips for general laboratory use plus accessories and a variety of tubes, plates, cuvettes, and other liquid handling supplies.

Single-channel and multichannel pipettes are available in popular volume ranges. Choose from a wide selection of pipette tips for general lab use and specialty applications, to fit Bio-Rad pipettes and most other pipette models.

 

Pipetting in a sterile environment

Pipette Tip Selection Guide

Quickly find the right pipette tip for your pipet and application — filter by volume, type, packaging, sterility, and pipette compatibility.

See Pipette Tip Selector

 

Pipettes and Micropipettes

The first pipettes were simple graduated tubes designed to take up fluid by suction and dispense it by gravity flow. Originally made of glass, pipettes may now be glass for reusability or solvent resistance, or for high-accuracy volumetric pipettes, but are more typically single-use, presterilized pipettes designed for single use.

Non-graduated pipettes include Pasteur pipettes, small-volume glass tubes with a fine tip and an attached rubber suction bulb, and low-accuracy, soft plastic transfer pipettes with an integrated suction bulb, often used for sample collection or dispensing small amounts of fluid in applications where volumetric accuracy is not critical, for example, an eye dropper.

Pipette outflow in an open-ended pipette can be controlled by slowly releasing the partial vacuum in the pipette with a finger closing the top of the tube, or by attaching a suction device with a release valve to the top of the pipette, known as a pipette aid or propipetter.

The past use of mouth pipetting in a laboratory with potentially toxic or biohazardous liquids is an unsafe practice, since replaced by using an electronic pipette aid, or pipette controller, such as our Professional Pipette Controller, which provides not only safety but precision and ease of use, a benefit for those with a large pipetting workload.

Open-tube pipettes are typically used to deliver volumes of 1-50 ml. The first micropipettes, designed to accurately dispense microliter volumes, were invented in the late 1950s. They consist of two parts, the micropipette, sometimes called a micropipettor, and disposable single-use plastic pipette tips that fit on the open end of the micropipette. Rather than an open top, the micropipette has an internal piston that uses air displacement to both draw liquid up into the pipette tip and expel the liquid to dispense it.

Air-displacement micropipettes can be fixed-volume, as in our educational micropipettes, but most laboratories use adjustable micropipettes to deliver liquid volumes from 0.1 µl to 1,000 µl (1 ml), such as our Professional Adjustable-Volume Digital Micropipettes, with a thumb-activated liquid piston and tip ejector and a volume adjustment dial.

These are also referred to as single-channel pipettes, as opposed to multi-channel pipettes, such as our 8-channel Professional Multichannel Micropipette, which are designed to facilitate high-throughput screening work in 96-well or 384-well plate formats.

Micropipette Calibration

Most regular micropipette users should have their pipets calibrated at six-month intervals. This calibration can be done by the manufacturer or a licensed vendor. However, for labs with an analytical balance available, a quick check of your micropipettes can be done by pipetting a specific volume of distilled water directly onto the balance pan, or onto a tared weigh boat, and checking that the weight is correct; for example, 1 ml should weigh 1 g. Of course, the balance must also be periodically calibrated. Pipette users in regulated industries such as clinical or pharmaceutical labs may be required to calibrate their pipettes more often and keep traceable calibration records, and such a casual calibration check would not be an acceptable substitute.

Pipette Tip Compatibility

Bio-Rad manufactures pipette tips in a range of sizes to fit all our micropipettes and many other manufacturers. To determine tip compatibility with your pipettes, see our Pipette Tip Selection Guide.

Pipette Tips (Micropipette Tips)

Micropipette Tip Sizing

Micropipette tips are manufactured in a number of sizes to fit specific micropipettes designed to deliver particular volume ranges; although there may be some overlap in ranges, most labs will find that they will need to stock a range of four to six sizes of pipette tips.

Bio-Rad's micropipettes cover the following volume ranges:

Single-Channel Micropipettes Volume Range, µl Volume Increment, µl Catalog Number
P2 0.1-2 0.002 1660499
P10 0.5-10 0.02 1660505
P20 2-20 0.02 1660506
P200 20-200 0.2 1660507
P1000 100-1,000 2.0 1660508

 

8-Channel Micropipettes Volume Range, µl Volume Increment, µl Catalog Number
P50 5-50 0.1 1660496
P200 20-200 0.2 1660495

Micropipette Tip Packaging

Our pipette tips are available in four different packaging options to suit your needs.

Micropipette Tip Packaging
  • Bulk Micropipette Tips - Bulk tips are the most economical option for general lab use in high-pipetting workloads. These tips may be racked by the user for quicker pipet loading and autoclaved if sterility is needed.
  • Pre-Racked Micropipette Tips - Save time with pipette tips preloaded into racks; especially beneficial for multichannel pipetting in an 8 x 12 format. Available presterilized or ready to autoclave. Choose from fully enclosed, reusable boxes, stacked with one shared lid, or stacked with individual lids.
  • Xcluda Aerosol Barrier Pipet Tips

    Aerosol Filter Pipette Tips

    Aerosol barrier pipette tips have a fiber filter insert at the top of the tip to prevent aerosol cross- contamination of samples, a feature of particular importance in PCR experiments.

  • SequePro Capillary Pipette Tips and Prot/Elec Gel Loading Pipette Tips

    Gel Loading Pipet Tips

    Our gel loading pipette tips are designed with tapered or capillary ends to facilitate smooth and even loading of the wells in nucleic acid or protein gels and IEF tube gels.

  • Pipette Tips for the AutoDG ddPCR System

    Specialized Pipette Tips

    Certain Bio-Rad instruments with automated liquid handling require specially designed pipette tips designed for the precision liquid-handling requirements of the particular system, for example, our Automated Droplet Generator for Bio-Rad's Droplet Digital PCR Systems.