A glass vial is a container. A glass vial is usually small, and would be used in laboratory work or to store small amounts of liquid. A glass vial is often bottle shaped, with a neck that is narrower than the body of the glass vial.

A glass vial is named from the Greek word ‘phiale’ meaning ‘a broad flat container’. A glass vial can also be spelt ‘glass phial’, but the spelling ‘glass vial’ is more common. Other terms sometimes used instead of glass vial are ampule (or ampoule), vacutainer, and very commonly, test tube. Really, these are all just types of glass vial.

A glass vial is a very common piece of laboratory equipment, and because it is made of glass it can be manufactured quite easily and cost effectively. For this reason anyone needing to buy a glass vial would normally buy in large numbers, making distribution more cost effective.

Because of its small size and ready availability, a glass vial is an ideal container for shipping pre-measured quantities of substance, and so a glass vial is a common choice for the distribution of controlled doses of medicine. As a way of ensuring that the substance in the glass vial has not been contaminated between packaging and use, a glass vial can be hermetically sealed after packing. This sort of glass vial is called an ampoule. A glass vial can also be fitted with a penetrable seal, which allows a hypodermic needle to be used to extract the substance contained in the glass vial into a syringe without exposing it to the environment. This type of glass vial is called an injection vial. Test tubes, one of the most common forms of glass vial, come in many shapes and sizes and can be sealed in a number of ways.

The word vial is also a verb, used to describe the action of putting a substance into a glass vial type container.

LSL