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.

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.

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. We recommend the use of PEEK capillary tubing (OD 1/32‘‘, ID 0,02‘‘). This combination will withstand at least 3.2 bar applied pressure without the occurrence of leakages

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

The syringe adapter can be used to connect any standard laboratory syringe with male Luer interface to tubing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.