The eye dropper, both glass and plastic types, can be sterilized and plugged with a rubber bulb at the open end of the pipette preventing any contamination from the atmosphere.[2] Generally, they are considered cheap enough to be disposable, however, so long as the glass point is not chipped, the eye dropper may be washed and reused indefinitely.[6] Glass pasteur pipettes can be used to make spotters for thin layer chromatography after pulling it over a flame, though it may take some practice.[10] The constriction toward the tip of the Pasteur pipettes may be plugged with a bit of tissue paper or cotton wool to filter off solids from small amounts of liquids.With appropriately fine silica gel, the bulb may be squeezed for microscale flash column chromatography.After squeezing the bulb to expel air, a pasteur pipette is inserted into the tube just below the level of the ring of refluxing liquid (into the vapor).Heat can be applied to the tip of a plastic Pasteur pipette to seal the solution and create a liquid-tight storage.
Glass Pasteur pipettes
Column chromatography constructed using plastic Pasteur pipette