Deep well plate knowledge base
Every question the deep well guides answer, organized by topic, plus the two storage problems covered in full here: evaporation and getting the last microliters back.
Deep well questions cluster around holding samples safely: how much fits, what seals it, whether it fits the instrument, and why a stored plate sometimes comes back lighter than it went in. This page indexes the answers across this guide and the sister guides, and covers evaporation and volume recovery in full below.
Start here
- What is a deep well plate? The definition and the choices inside the family.
- The complete guide to deep well plates: the four families and their applications.
- How to choose: volume class, shape, height, and sterility as a decision sequence.
- The deep well plate guide: picks by job.
Volumes and formats
- Volume classes and well shapes in the choosing page.
- 96 well volumes for the assay side of a workflow.
- 384 deep well formats on the 384 guide, including total volume per well.
Sealing and freezing
- Sealing deep well plates: films, mats, and heat seals matched to storage temperature, and freezing at -80 °C.
- The edge effect in the microplates knowledge base: the same evaporation physics, read as an assay problem.
Instrument fit
- KingFisher plates: the instrument-specific fit questions answered.
- Height, skirt, and automation fit in the choosing page.
Evaporation: why stored plates come back light
A sealed plate that loses volume in storage is almost always losing it through the seal, slowly. Adhesive films are the usual path: adhesives stiffen at freezer temperatures, edges lift microscopically, and vapor leaves well by well, edge wells first, over weeks. Permeable film materials add a second, slower path straight through the film. The checks are simple: weigh plates before and after a storage trial, and audit seals after a freeze-thaw cycle, not before. The fixes follow the cause: heat seals or cap mats for anything stored for months at -80 °C, adhesive films reserved for short and room-temperature storage, fill levels kept consistent so headspace starts equal, and valuable libraries split across two plates so one seal failure is not the whole collection. The sealing page matches seal types to storage jobs.
Getting the last microliters back
Recovery is a geometry problem. A flat bottom spreads a small volume across the whole well floor, where tips cannot reach all of it; a pyramid bottom in a square well, or a conical bottom in a round well, gathers the same volume into a point a tip can drain. Three working habits complete the geometry: spin the plate briefly before opening it, so droplets on walls and seal join the pool; pipette from the bottom point with the tip just off the plastic, rather than chasing the meniscus down the wall; and consolidate remainders into fewer wells instead of keeping a plate of near-empty ones, because every transfer loses a film of liquid to the tip and the wall. For volumes under about 50 microliters, recovery losses are a percentage worth planning for, not a surprise.
Related guides
Common questions
Why did my stored plate lose volume?
Evaporation through the seal, most often an adhesive film whose edges lift as the adhesive stiffens at freezer temperature. Edge wells lose first and fastest. For storage measured in months, heat seals and cap mats hold up better; weigh a trial plate across a freeze to verify.
How full can I fill a deep well plate for freezing?
Leave headroom in every well. Samples expand as they freeze, and a brim-full well can push a cap up or split a film seal as it goes. The working volume printed for the plate, not the brim volume, is the fill guide.
What is a pyramid bottom for?
Gathering small volumes for recovery. A pyramid bottom is the V shape inside a square well: instead of spreading across a flat floor, the last liquid collects at the point, where a pipette tip can reach nearly all of it.
Do deep well plates fit KingFisher instruments?
Only the plates molded for them. KingFisher processing depends on tip comb and magnet geometry, so instrument-specific plates are the safe buy; a standard deep well plate of the same volume may not process correctly. The KingFisher page on this guide works through the fit.