Disposable culture dish – how do you choose? Material, specifications, sterilized method?

When selecting disposable items culture dish, to ensure they are suitable for the experimental setting, choose the appropriate type based on three criteria—material, specifications and sterilized method—to strike a balance between experimental stability and value for money.

Choice of materials

Polystyrene (PS)‌: The preferred choice, offering high transparency and a smooth surface, which facilitates microscopic observation. Most have undergone TC hydrophilic modification, making them suitable for the vast majority of experimental scenarios, including adherent cell culture and routine microbial culture, whilst remaining reasonably priced. Please note that it is not resistant to organic solvents such as ethanol and acetone, nor can it withstand high temperatures and pressures sterilized on its own.

Polypropylene (PP): Highly resistant to chemical corrosion; withstands high pressure at 121°C sterilized; offers good toughness and is not easily broken; suitable for contact with organic solvents, experiments requiring high-temperature or low-temperature storage conditions, and suspension cell culture. A disadvantage is its relatively low transparency, making it unsuitable for detailed observation under high-magnification objectives.

Special materials: Polycarbonate (PC) offers high toughness and transparency, and is frequently used in specialised optical experiments; cycloolefin copolymer (COC) has low protein adsorption and high light transmittance, making it suitable for high-resolution sensitivity detection scenarios such as fluorescence imaging; as these materials are relatively expensive, they should be selected as required.

Standard round sizes are commonly used in laboratories and can be selected to suit the scale of the experiment:

Diameter Specifications Base Area Recommended Working Volume Typical Applications

35 mm ~8 cm² 2–3 mL Small-scale cell observation, monoclonal screening

60 mm ~21 cm² 4–6 mL Routine cell passaging, preliminary drug screening

90 mm Standard model 15–20 mL For microbial colony counting and environmental settleable bacteria testing

100 mm ~55 cm² 10–15 mL Large-scale cell expansion, virus culture

150 mm ~145 cm² 25–30 mL High-throughput culture, large-scale strain expansion

In addition, there are multi-well plates (6-well, 12-well, 24-well and 96-well) and special formats such as the square culture dish, which are suitable for applications such as high-throughput drug screening and high-density stacking.

sterilized Selection of method

Gamma rays sterilized ‌: Suitable for the vast majority of plastic materials, such as PS and PP, sterilized it delivers consistent results, effectively eradicates all types of microorganisms, contains no harmful substances residue, and does not damage culture dish the material; this type of product is the preferred choice for cell culture applications.

Ethylene oxide sterilized: Suitable for special temperature-sensitive materials; sterilized delivers reliable results, but it is necessary to confirm that the ethylene oxide residue content of the product complies with national standards to prevent residue substances from affecting cell or microbial growth.

A compliant single-use culture dish SAL (sterility assurance level) (SAL) must be 10⁻⁶, i.e. a contamination probability of one in a million; products used for cell culture must also meet the additional requirements set out in DNase-free, RNase-free and pyrogen-free to avoid interfering with experimental results.

Note: The product information above is for reference only!

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Note: The information on the scientific research products above is for reference only!