Diatom Lab has developed a new, innovative Cement to seal the margin of the cover glass you see in our diatom and radiolarian preparations for optical microscopy.
Actually, our proprietary high refractive index mountants harden very well and have been shown not to deteriorate over the years, so the Sealing Cement has a more aesthetic than protective function (in fact, if you are interested in microscope slides without sealing cement, you can always make a specific request).
But the aesthetic aspect of a product has its importance, especially to give the right presentation to unique, high-level technical and qualitative preparations like ours: let us remember that Diatom Lab counts among its customers many important research centers in the world, which often ask for customized products needed to perform specific experiments using cutting-edge microscopes.
Our new Sealing Cement has extraordinary resistance: in fact it has passed tests carried out with many immersion oils of different brands and types, ranging from the now almost obsolete cedar oil to the modern Zeiss 518F. Tests showed no deterioration of the cement even after several hours and days in contact with immersion oil.
Our Sealing Cement also has extraordinary resistance to water, in case you want to use specific lenses for water immersion.
If you are a beginner, we inform you that immersion can only be used with specific lenses, and that you can obviously observe our microscope slides also with dry lenses, which are the ones generally used (and easier to use).
If you still don't know how to clean our microscope slides from immersion oil, we suggest using common cotton buds on the cover glass, after having slightly moistened them with a solution made up of half isopropyl alcohol (or common denatured alcohol that you can find at the supermarket) and half water.
The new proprietary Diatom Lab Sealing Cement is applied to all our microscope slides intended for optical microscopy, starting today. Try it!
Diatom Lab produces preparations not only for optical microscopes, but also for scanning electron microscopes, atomic force microscopes and much more.