The Catalyst 96 magnet plate is a new type of 96-well magnet plate designed for manual pipetting. It is built with novel slotted ring magnets, which cause magnetic beads to aggregate in two ring segments instead of one continuous ring. This enables manual users to work just as they are used to and slide the pipet tip down the inside wall of the well without having to worry about accidentally disturbing the bead ring and possibly removing valuable DNA with the supernatant.

The Catalyst 48 slotted ring magnet plate is designed to work with the 48 deep-well round bottom plate by Nest Scientific. Each well of that plate holds up to 3.5 ml, perfect for protocols that require that little bit of extra volume. The 48 well format fills the gap between 96-deep well plates, which top out at 2.2 ml, and the next step up, being a 24 well plate at 8-10 ml.

The combination of the slotted magnets and the round-bottom wells work together extremely well; the beads settle rapidly and form two clean arches at the well bottom, leaving an opening for pipette tips to slide down the well wall towards the bottom without ever touching the beads. At 11 mm diameter, the wells are big enough so one can actually see what the pipet tip is doing inside the well, making this plate very easy to use.

The magnets can be rotated to work by row or by column.