Adding hydrogel as a dome may face the gel floating issue. Therefore, we don’t recommend the dome method; however, some customers still want to adopt the dome method. At this point, the non-tissue culture-treated plate can hold the dome better than TC-Plate with some tips. You may need to add the dome as soon as you mix the gel and cells. Also, warming up the medium can help a little (slow down the gel formation’s speed).
However, the dome method is not 100% successful with non-TC plates, and some scientists really have a hard time with it. That is why we recommend covering the whole bottom of the well with our hydrogel. We usually use a 48 or 96-well plate (about 100-150 uL per well of a 48-well plate or 50 uL per 96-well plate). For the full bottom coverage, the TC plate is better. Alternatively, you could coat the plate with 0.1-0.5% gelatin for 10 minutes and then remove the gelatin before adding the hydrogel.