When you use the lab-on-a-chip devices you of course require a connection between the chip and the macroscopic world on a regular basis. Our fluidic interfaces provide you with an easy and well-proven chip-to-world interfacing. Since the right material choice is often relevant for your applications, we offer our interfaces and plugs in different materials. PP for example is a relatively hard material, that guarantuees you an easy use when it comes to connect tubes to your chips. TPE, on the other hand, as a softer material, allows you to easily close the interfaces without applying to much pressure. The TPE interfaces also withthand heavier forces than PP interfaces. So the risk that you damage the chip by applying too much force is reduced.
Interface types
Male Mini Luer Fluid Connectors
In order to cope with minimized footprints, we realized a merger of the miniaturization with well-proven fluidic interfaces from the medical world, resulting in our Mini Luer connectors. They give you the chance to connect microfluidic ChipShop‘s Mini Luer fluidic platforms to tubes or, integrated in an instrument, directly to the instrument. As a male counterpart to the female Mini Luer interfaces on the chip, they allow you to connect them via the tubing, for example, to pumps, valves, or waste reservoirs. You can order them as single interfaces, twins, or rows of four. In addition to that, we offer them in different colors to make the differentiation between different liquids entering and/or leaving the chip easier for you. Our male Mini Luer fluid connectors have a dead volume of approximately 8 μl.
Male Mini Luer tube tuck connectors
The male Mini Luer tube tuck connector can be used to insert tubing directly into the connector and enable connection to tubing quickly and easily. The Mini Luer tube tuck connector is available for tubing with OD of 1/16“ or 1/32“. We recommend the use of PEEK capillary tubing. This combination will withstand at least 3.2 bar applied pressure without the occurrence of leakages.
Male Luer tube tuck connectors
The male Luer tube tuck connector can be used to insert tubing directly into the connector and enable connection to tubing quickly and easily. The Luer tube tuck connector is available for tubing with OD of 1/16“ or 1/32“. We recommend the use of PEEK capillary tubing. This combination will withstand at least 3.2 bar applied pressure without the occurrence of leakages.
Male Mini Luer Plugs
When you need to close some of the Mini Luer interfaces on your microfluidic platform, you will choose our male Mini Luer plugs Just like our Mini Luer fluid connectors, we offer them as single units, twins, or as rows of four. Furthermore, you can order them in different colors to make the differentiation between different input and output ports easier for you. Depending on the pressure you need to apply, we provide you with plugs in a hard polymer (PP) and a soft polymer (TPE).
Male Mini Luer Plugs – Low Volume Displacement Plugs
We designed these special male Mini Luer plugs to fit into the through-hole integrated in the microfluidic chip, which is the base of the surrounding female Mini Luer interface. They only seal that hole as well as only replace the liquid in there and not in the whole female Mini Luer interface. This helps you to avoid liquid movement due to air displacement of the volume of the Mini Luer plug.
One-Wing Male Mini Luer Plugs – Low Volume Displacement Plugs
We designed the one-wing version of the male Mini Luer low volume displacement plugs when there are narrow features necessary on the microfluidic device. You can put the one-wing plugs perfectly in dense arrays of female Mini Luer interfaces on chip, their handling is easy and they reliably close the matching counterpart on chip.
Mini Luer to Pipette Adapter
Our Mini Luer to pipette adapters allow you to flushly seal pipette tip to a chip equipped with a Mini Luer interface. That allows you to apply more fluidic pressure and reduces the contamination risk.
Pipette Adapter Plug
The male pipetting interface plugs Fluidic 1225 and Fluidic 1236 are used to close female pipetting interfaces on our fluidic platforms. The pipetting interface simplifies direct pipetting into the microfluidic chips.
The pipetting interface plug Fluidic 1236 only seals the through-hole at the bottom of the interface and prevents liquid movement, due to minimal air or liquid displacement. Both pipetting interface plugs fit well into the chamber chip with pipetting interface Fluidic 1495.
Mini Luer to Luer Adapter
Our Mini Luer to Luer adapters allow you to connect devices with a standard male Luer interface (e.g. a syringe) to a chip with Mini Luer interface. Due to the size of the Luer connector, you can only use every second Mini Luer port with this adapter.
Syringe Adapter
The syringe adapter can be used to connect any standard laboratory syringe with male Luer interface to tubing.
Stand alone fluidic interfaces – Short female Luer compatible connector
The short female stand-alone Luer connectors are devices for chip prototyping. The stand-alone interface features a large footprint for easy assembly and gluing to protoytpe devices with simple through hole interfaces. The connectors can be glued on prototyp chips made from polymer, glass
or silicone.
The shortened stand-alone Luer adapter has a reduced height and is identical to microfluidic ChipShop‘s Luer interface. Hence, it is compatible with all of our available Luer connectors, plugs, and tanks.
Female Luer Lock Compatible Connectors
Our female Luer lock-compatible connectors are tools for chip prototyping. We mount these devices, which are compatible with standard male Luer and Luer lock adapters, like for example used in syringes, on the microfluidic chips. That gives you the chance to use also prototyped chips, usually chips with directly milled structures, or glass and silicon microfluidic devices, with standard microfluidic interfaces. The diameter of the through-hole is 1.3 mm.
Please note: The connectors are not compatible with all of microfluidic ChipShop‘s Luer accessories. Not sure what to choose? Please reach out to inquiries@microfluidic-ChipShop.com and we will be happy to recommend you a matching combination.
Female Luer Lock Compatible Connectors with Wide Base
Our female Luer Lock compatible connectors are tools for chip prototyping. We mount these devices, which are compatible with standard male Luer and Luer Lock adapters, like for example used in syringes, on the microfluidic chips. That gives you the chance to use also prototyped chips, usually chips with directly milled structures, or glass and silicon microfluidic devices, with standard microfluidic interfaces. The diameter of the through-hole is 1.3 mm. The wide base makes it easier for you to glue them onto your chip.
Please note: The connectors are not compatible with all of microfluidic ChipShop‘s Luer accessories. Not sure what to choose? Please reach out to inquiries@microfluidic-ChipShop.com and we will be happy to recommend you a matching combination.
Female Luer Connector – 90° Angle for Horizontal Operation
Stand-Alone Olive
Through-holes are the common interface for most glass chips and a few polymer chips. Given its plain structure, the interface might pose some issues when you want to connect tubes. microfluidic ChipShop has developed stand-alone olives to solve that. They serve as an adapter to the through-hole interface and you can easily glue them onto them.
Stand-Alone Female Mini Luer
The solution for the through-hole interface is also available as female Mini Luer interface. That provides you with another ready-to-use adapter beside the stand-alone olive.
Male Luer Plugs
Our male Luer plugs enable you to close the female Luer and Luer Lock interfaces on your fluidic platforms. With the help of these plugs, you can move liquid through the female Luer interface into the fluidic channels on chip and safely close the fluidic interfaces to avoid a contamination risk. A version with retaining strip allows you to directly attach the Male Luer plug to a lab-on-a-chip device with a suitable counterpart for the pin at the end of the strip. This convenient method ensures an easy handling of the overall device.
The Luer plunger Fluidic 1539 has a textured surface and soft PET material and provides a better grip and hence liquid tightness.
As an alternative to Fluidic 270, we also offer a version of the Luer plug which has a reduced length and thus displaces less volume in the Luer interface. While the standard Luer plug displaces a volume of approx. 55 μl, the reduced height Luer plug only displaces 20 μl.
Male Luer Fluid Connectors
Our male Luer fluid connectors are your tool to couple the female Luer interfaces on the fluidic platforms with tubing deriving from pumps, valves or reservoirs. An important feature of these connectors is the massively reduced death volume compared to conventional interfaces. This also allows you a smooth pumping from liquid reservoir to chip without huge pressure drops that might otherwise occurr due to the different channel diameters.
NanoPort Assembly
With our NanoPort Assembly you can connect 1/16” OD tubing with the included fittings. To connect 1/32” OD or 360 μm OD, tubing sleeves for each size are included in each assembly. Glue is not included in the N-333 NanoPort Assembly. Please note that the footprint of the NanoPort is 8.4 mm.
LabSmith CapTite™ Components for Fluidic Interfaces
CapTite™ components are designed for high-pressure and low dead volumes. You can use them on microfluidic chips containing simple through-holes as access ports, like the straight channel chips (product codes 10000036 to 10000188) or cross-shaped channel chips (product codes 10000168 to 10000167). You can interface them directly with LabSmith’s hardware, for example syringe pumps and valves (for hardware details see www.labsmith.com).
We offer a choice of different components allowing you to try various connection options. This includes:
- Bonded port connectors: Bonds to port on chip for capillary-chip interface. Compatible with approx. 1 mm port size. Material: Ultem
- Chip reservoir: Threads into bonded port connector to provide 85 μl fluid reservoir. Also connects to Luer tip syringe for low pressure connection.
- Luer Lock adapter: Female fitting for connecting syringe to 360 μm OD capillary. Material: PEEK.
- One piece fitting: For connecting 360 μm OD capillary to CapTite components. Material: PEEK.
- One piece plug: For plugging unused CapTite ports. Material: PEEK.
- Complete LabSmith connection kit: The kit contains besides 15 bonded port connectors, 15 one piece fittings, 5 one piece plugs, 5 chip reservoirs and 2 Luer Lock adaptors all accessories needed to mount the devices on a chip such as epoxy adhesive and a wrench for the CapTite connectors as well as 360 μm OD capillary to connect the chip to peripherals.
- Cross-shaped channel chips with integrated threads.