a capillary processor and aliquoter (cpa) has been designed and fabricated that is capable of accepting aliquots of whole blood and automatically processing them into discrete aliquots of plasma. the device consists of two disks, each of which contains 16 individual capillaries and a processing rotor. one of the disks accepts larger capillaries, each of which will hold approx. 100 mu l of whole blood the second disk, which accepts 2.54-cm-long precision capillaries of varying internal diameter, provides for exact sample volumes ranging from 1 to 10 mu l. the processing rotor consists of 16 individual compartments and chambers to accept both disks. gravimetric and photometric evaluation of the cpa indicates that it is capable of entraining and delivering microliter volumes of liquids with a degree of precision and accuracy (1 to 2) approaching that of a state-of-the-art mechanical pipette. in addition, we have demonstrated that aliquots of whole blood can be transferred into the chambers of the processing unit and separated into their cellular and plasma fractions, which can then be analyzed with an acceptable degree of precision (i.e., c.v.s of approx. +-3 for serum enzyme measurements). 15 refs., 6 figs., 4 tbls. (era citation 11:036630)