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A new technique for obtaining large platinum‐carbon replicas
Author(s) -
Adachi Eijiro,
Nakatani Toshio,
Hashimoto Paulo H.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2818.1987.tb02832.x
Subject(s) - replica , platinum , layer (electronics) , carbon fibers , materials science , evaporation , coating , nanotechnology , chromic acid , composite material , chemistry , organic chemistry , art , physics , composite number , visual arts , thermodynamics , catalysis
SUMMARY A problem often encountered in freeze‐fracturing is that platinum‐carbon replicas roll up or are broken into fragments during tissue digestion and replica washing. In replicas damaged in these ways, tissue orientation and cell identification are difficult. In order to prevent such damage, methods have been introduced of replica strengthening by coating them with plastic films (Steere, 1957; Willison & Rowe, 1980; Stolinski et al. , 1983), or with an additional layer of silver or gold (Robards & Umrath, 1978; Robards & Sleytr, 1985). A disadvantage of these methods, however, is that the additional layer must be removed before the replicas can be examined under the electron microscope. Removal of the additional layer results in loss of image quality. A reinforcing plastic film may not be completely digested by the tissue solvent and will then contaminate the replica, while the silver technique requires a silver evaporation source to be present in the vacuum chamber. Instead of replica strengthening methods, some authors recommend putting replicas carrying tissues, which have been partially digested by bleach (Pearce, 1983) or chromic acid (Fetter & Costello, 1986), onto carbon‐coated gold grids and then floating them on chromic acid. However, neither this method nor the replica strengthening method assure the production of large unrolled replicas. Moreover, gold grids are rather expensive.