title: Managing evaporation for more robust microscale assays. Part 1. Volume loss in high throughput assays.
abstract: Evaporation is a well known issue when handling small liquid volumes. Here we present a review of microscale assays prone to evaporation and methods to make them more robust. Applications for these assays span from combinatorial chemistry to cell-biology where the stability of concentrations and osmolarity can be critical. A dimensionless evaporation number Ev is presented and used to characterize volume loss in short term and long term microscale assays. Ev can be used both as a design tool and as an analysis parameter. The advantageous use of evaporation in some applications is also discussed.
authors.affiliation: MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ. erwin.berthier@gmail.com
authors.forename: Erwin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Berthier
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Warrick
authors.forename: Hongmeiy
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Beebe
mesh_terms: D001322:Autoanalysis; D001681:Biological Assay / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D001695:Biology; D002468:Cell Physiological Phenomena; D020650:Combinatorial Chemistry Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D008904:Miniaturization / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014835:Volatilization