Correlative Array Tomography

MagC, magnetic collection of ultrathin sections for volumetric correlative light and electron microscopy

“…These unwanted effects typically arise when the water surface shows strong convexity profiles produced by hydrophobic substrate portions and walls, as sketched in Figure 2—figure supplement 5f. The three main precepts to avoid folding or warping drawn from my own experience and from the literature (Kubota et al, 2018; Horstmann et al, 2012; Burel et al, 2018; Koike et al, 2017; Templier and Hahnloser, 2019; Harris et al, 2006; Wacker et al, 2016; Lee et al, 2018) are to handle sections far from walls, to have a low contact angle between the water surface and the substrate, and to heat the substrate. These three precepts were followed in MagC by maintaining the sections in the center of the knife boat, by making the silicon wafer hydrophilic with a plasma treatment, and by heating the wafer with heating pads placed below the knife boat.…”

“…Recently introduced carbon-nanotube tapes (Kubota et al, 2018) solve most of these issues, although they require a custom device for reel-to-reel plasma hydrophilization and manual grounding of all cut tape stripes with conductive tape on top. Other non-destructive collection approaches require excellent ultramicrotomy skills and intense monitoring of ribbons during sectioning and collection onto flat substrates (Horstmann et al, 2012; Spomer et al, 2015; Burel et al, 2018; Koike et al, 2017; Smith, 2018; Templier and Hahnloser, 2019).…”