[3dem] Floating carbon off of mica?

[Isabel Cylinder]

Hello-

I'm currently attempting to float a thin carbon film off of mica and onto EM grids. I was able to successfully complete the procedure before using a very thick layer generated by a very old carbon evaporator, but now we have a new machine and can key in layer thickness to the nanometer. That said, I'm creating a 10 nm layer of carbon on a 1"x3" piece of mica, and when I try to float the carbon into a Buchner funnel full of water, it crumbles and fragments and I am left with no useable pieces of carbon to float down onto my EM grids. My next step will be to try a 20 nm layer of carbon on a smaller piece of mica.

Does anybody have any experiences like this? How did you fix this problem? Any tips?

Any and all help is appreciated. Thank you!

Isabel Cylinder
Research Assistant II
Barklis Lab
Molecular Microbiology & Immunology
Oregon Health & Science University
(503) 494-8098
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/mailman/private/3dem/attachments/20140513/8fd21b2f/attachment.html>