SDLABIO Deep Well Plate

Number of wells and experimental requirements

• 24 Deep well plates have the largest single-well volume, typically accommodating approximately 10 ml of sample. These plates are suitable for processing or culturing larger sample volumes, such as cell culture, fermentation broth collection, or large-volume sample storage. While these plates offer advantages such as ease of use and sufficient sample volume, they also offer disadvantages such as low throughput, making them unsuitable for high-throughput experiments.
• 48 Well deep well plate balances sample capacity and throughput, with a single-well volume of approximately 5 ml. It is suitable for experiments requiring medium-scale sample processing, such as bacterial culture, sample preparation before DNA extraction, or medium-throughput drug screening. It uses less space and reagents than 24 well deep well plates, while still maintaining a relatively high sample volume.
• Deep well plates 96 is the most common deep-well plate format in the laboratory, with a typical volume per well of 1.2–2.2 ml. It accommodates large sample throughput while meeting international standards for automation and high-throughput screening. The 96 deep well plates are widely used in nucleic acid extraction, protein purification, compound screening, and high-throughput analysis. For most experiments requiring a balance between capacity and efficiency, it is the most common and versatile choice.
• The volume per well of a 384 well deep well plate is significantly smaller, typically ranging from 0.5–1.2 ml, emphasizing high throughput and space conservation. It is primarily used in scenarios such as drug discovery, compound library management, and automated screening experiments, enabling higher data volumes within limited space. However, due to its smaller per-well volume, it is not suitable for experiments requiring large sample volumes or large-scale cell culture.

Well bottom shape

• The advantage of flat-bottomed deep-well plates is the flat surface of the liquid within the wells, facilitating optical detection, such as colorimetry or fluorescence readings. This bottom is also more suitable for experiments requiring optical signal acquisition, such as enzymatic assays or cell viability assays. However, a disadvantage is that flat bottoms are not as efficient as conical bottoms for sample concentration or pellet collection.
• V-bottom (conical) deep-well plates are commonly used for pellet collection and sample separation, and are particularly well-suited for centrifugation. The V-shaped bottom concentrates cells or particles at the tip of the cone, facilitating supernatant removal or pellet collection. Therefore, they are widely used in experiments such as nucleic acid extraction, protein precipitation, and immunomagnetic separation.
• U-bottom deep-well plates feature a gentle transition from the bottom, retaining the mixing properties of a round bottom while also providing a degree of pellet concentration. They are often used when both culture and some separation operations need to be performed in the same plate.

Sterility and Asepticity

• For cell culture or molecular biology experiments, we recommend sterile, DNase/RNase-free deep-well plates. For general chemical sample storage, non-sterile products are more cost-effective.

Well shape

• The advantage of square deep well plate is their improved space utilization. They offer a larger effective volume per well than round wells of the same specification. Therefore, they are often used in experiments requiring large sample storage, such as sample library development, compound storage, or large-volume bacterial/cell culture. The square structure also facilitates automated robotic sampling, making it suitable for high-throughput experiments. However, due to the right-angled transitions in the well walls, liquid retention may occur during mixing, resulting in more sample residue than in round wells.
• Round-well deep-well plates offer advantages in mixing and liquid flow. Their smooth pore walls allow for more natural liquid flow, preventing sample retention. They are particularly well-suited for experiments requiring frequent mixing, resuspension, or transfers, such as DNA/RNA extraction, immunomagnetic bead experiments, or cell suspension culture. However, their effective volume is slightly smaller than that of square-well plates of the same specification.