Stainless Steel Microvials

Stainless Steel Microvials for dry milling

Stainless Steel Microvials have the same outer dimensions and weight as standard 2 ml microvials. They can be sealed with polyethylene flange caps, silicone rubber stopper caps or crimped septa caps. Stainless Steel Microvials stand up to dry milling (i.e., no liquid present in the vial) in high-energy cell disrupters such as our Mini-Beadbeater.  Ordinary plastic microvials can break during beadbeating – especially when using steel beads as a bead media.
(One exception is our recently introduced XXTuff™ polypropylene reinforced microvial. ). Huge improvement in temperature control and heat transfer. The thin wall, stainless steel body of our microvial gives 10X better heat transfer than plastic microvials.  This makes possible much faster temperature cycles when using PCR thermo cyclers and having shorter cooling intervals in an ice/water bath when following a protocol that requires periodic cooling during cell disruption.Applications include:

• Dry grinding in a Bead mill (MiniBeadbeater) where milling forces are too severe for common plastic microvials2.
• Achieving far superior heat transfer – as might be required for PCR methods.
• Superior temperature control of samples in microvials.
• Milling or beadbeating of plant and soil samples where trace contamination with polypropylene particles abraded from a microvial must be avoided

1. NOTE! Special Silicone Rubber Caps are required when beadbeating dry or hard frozen samples using steel beads in the Stainless Steel Microvials. Scroll down for information on Silicone Rubber Caps.2. An important exception is our new XXTuff polypropylene microvial. It is the the toughest vial we offer for dry milling applications. Purchase information:
Cat. No. 2007, 1.8 ml stainless steel (type 305) microvials. Polyethylene flange caps are included1. Package size: 100 in a polybag.