Any experience with environmental S.E.M.? - (Aug/18/2009 )

Hi everybody,

I was wondering does anybody online have any experience with environmental scanning electron microscopy? We have a new SEM with an environmental mode in our university, but the group that run it are engineers and have never worked with biological samples before (there was all sorts of confusion and panic about what my kidney cells would do to their 1.3m euro microscope when we tried to image them the other day!).
So is there anyone out there who does use an ESEM? If so, any help or advice would be very much appreciated as we are literally clueless about how to prep the samples and image them!

Thanks,

Rob

I'd recommend putting in a call to the company that sold your university the microscope. They must have some recommendations on using their equipment for biological samples.

See your pm....I send you a paper with a method for human cells.