With increasing costs of solvents, their disposition and with the safety issues connected to high usage of solvents, reduction of sample volumes has become more and more popular. In addition chromatography efficiency increases with lower sample volumes, as long as signal intensity is guaranteed to be strong enough to generate a chromatographic peak that can be detected.

Samples with a lower volume than 1.0 mL have to be delivered to the autosampler in appropriate micro vials, in order to offer the needle ideal conditions for sample removal. During selection of the most suitable product, safety, handling and price are important factors.