Handling of volumes in the mL range of highly viscous liquids such as 99 % glycerol, detergents or collagen in the laboratory and for analytical purposes has proven difficult, requiring the use of suboptimal tools such as spoons. These requirements cause tremendous delays to analysis and mixing procedures. As such, the precise volume of the liquid must frequently be determined via several material-intensive steps: in an initial time-consuming step, the highly viscous liquids are transferred between different vessels, followed by weighing and calculating the volume by consulting the liquid’s specific density.
In order to process aqueous liquids in precisely, modern laboratories also use pipettes with different functional principles, each equipped with the respective consumable tips. For viscous liquids in particular, those pipettes that function according to the direct displacement principle, similar to that of a syringe, have prevailed. However, increasing viscosity leads to growing flow resistance inside the tip. The ...
