[3dem] Problems blotting the liquid ethane
Eduardo Sanz-Garcia
esanzgar at chem.byu.edu
Fri Feb 22 14:21:51 PST 2008
Bill Tivol wrote:
>
> Dear Eduardo,
> I don't blot the liquid ethane at all. When I remove the tweezer from
> the ethane and dip it into LN2, the ethane freezes. The ethane that
> remains on the grid protects against ice crystals landing on the grid
> during the transfer to the grid box, and the ethane is gone by the
> time the grid is loaded into the scope.
Do you have any guest of what is the highest temperature during the
transfer?
I have an hypothesis: I do the whole process so near to liquid N2
temperatures that there is not chance for the solid ethane on the grid
to sublime.
Is that possible?
If the ethane is still solid when holder is inserted in the microscope
how long would it take to sublime?
> Furthermore, ethane is non-polar, so it would not be expected to wick
> into the filter paper, which is cellulose and, therefore, polar.
This is not true. Filter paper can blot non-polar substances, including
liquid ethane.
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