Performance Assessment of a Liquid Handling Robot

Absorbance Results

 

Performance Assessment of the Multichannel Pod

 

The post-calibration performance of transferring 20 μL aqueous solution was satisfactory, with lower than 4% relative inaccuracy and less than 5% coefficient of variation. Likewise, when dealing with 10 μL liquid, the Multichannel Pod integrated with P20 tips fulfilled the acceptability criteria easily. Both relative inaccuracy and coefficient of variation were under 5% for the 10 μL test, meaning that all channels in the Multichannel Pod were accurate and precise. As for 5 μL, the overall performance after calibration was also sufficient to meet the criteria set for liquid volume less than 10 μL. The assessment results shows that Channel C8 and D12 were the least accurate and least precise channels for 5 μL liquid handling with inacc > 10% and CV > 12%. Though they were the least accurate and least precise channels, they still met the acceptability criteria. Moreover, when compared with the performance of delivering an amount of 20 or 10 μL liquid, these two channels were able to perform acceptably. So, the inaccuracy and imprecision of these two channels might be accounted for the low replicate number. In contrast, Channel F11 and E5 were noticed to be one of the least imprecise channels for 5 μL liquid delivery, whereas these channels were not necessarily the one of most inaccurate channels. This might signify that there were relatively high variations in liquid delivery in Channel F11 and E5, but the average volume among three replicates was close to the requested volume. Thus, more replicates should be taken to qualify the performance.

 

To sum up, the data obtained by the Absorbance-Based Method shows that most channels of the Multichannel Pod were well calibrated. This may conclude that the Absorbance-Based Method is potential to be an applicable means to assess the performance of all channels in the Multichannel Pod.