MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

I have a nice sample of quartz, with many many very small inclusions. The issue is that the surface of the quartz is rough, causing images I take of the inclusions to be blurry at best. So I have an idea, using immersion oil on top of the quartz, with a slide cover on top of that, should reduce the effects of the uneven surface, similarly to how if you put water on a matte table, it wont look matte where the water is, the immersion oil should fill in all the unevenness, and then the slide cover should make it flat. Well, I'm not completely sure, does anyone have any experience with this or something similar to it? The refractive index of crystalline quartz (1.545) is very similar to that of immersion oil (1.515) but is it far enough away that my results may not improve at all?

Here is an example image of the specific quartz, which shows the roughness of the surface.

No personal experience … but I would think it’s a very sensible idea

MichaelG.

I agree, it's worth a try. However....

20x and above M-type objectives won't like the cover glass. On the other hand, if you're using standard objectives for cover glass, you might be limited by depth of field above 20x.

Sure Squintsalot wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 14, 2023 6:46 pm

I agree, it's worth a try. However....

20x and above M-type objectives won't like the cover glass. On the other hand, if you're using standard objectives for cover glass, you might be limited by depth of field above 20x.

Yeah, DOF will probably really suck, because with non immersion objectives not only do I have the extra depth of the slide cover, and the oil, but the inclusions are already a decent bit into the quartz.