How to sterilize cover slips (glasses)? - (Jan/30/2009 )

Hi, I am wondering how you sterilize cover glasses? In my old lab we used to wash them really good and then rinse them with 70% ethanol and place them under UV for 30 min. Do you know a better alternate?

For mycology slides cultures - wash them in surfactant to remove grease, 70% ethanol and flame. The UV is silly- it's pretty good at blocking.

GeorgeWolff on Jan 30 2009, 04:43 PM said:

Very good point. We got contamination by just UV irradiation.

I drop them in pure alcohol, leave them for 5 min, remove them and wash them with PBS 3x to remove alcohol....I also used to UV them for 1 hour, but not anymore cause I see no contamination.

movafagh bashid

If it's just plain, uncoated coverglass we put them in glass petri dishes and autoclave them.

pure (100%?) alcohol is less effective and more expensive than 70%.

GeorgeWolff on Jan 31 2009, 10:48 PM said:

Yup. there were several good threads on this. 70% was recommended due to several reasons.

One can dip the coverslip in 100% ethanol and burn them one by one. Takes a lot of time. Or autoclave them.

We autoclave a pack of coverslip usually, but if there's no time spraying with 70% ETOH and drying (in the sterile hood obviously) worked very well too.

Lost

Curtis on Jan 31 2009, 02:28 AM said:

Are you Iranian?