MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

I am adhesive poor. I am using white paper glue to adhere my cover glass to the slide. It's really messy and completely not water tight. What is the adhesive to use?

There are several microscopy mountants that you can choose based on what are you trying to mount on the slide.

A very basic and easy to start mountant is Nail Polish. It's not perfect, but you have to try it out and find how it works for you.
For mroe details about NPM, check out this artilce from Micscape magazine:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/art ... olish.html


This is an another set of fantastic articles:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/art ... ount2.html

Check out the following link as well. It lists different commercial mountants for different types of specimen. It gives you an idea where to start and how to proceed.
https://www.emsdiasum.com/microscopy/pr ... esive.aspx

Once you mastered nail polish, you can choose more reliable mountants like euparal mounting medium, etc...

In my view it is typical for microscopy that you need a different mountant, stain etc. for every new topic you are interested in.
It always dependes on the object and the used stains. The mountants differ in:
- refractive index
- solubility
- compatibility with stains
- intermedium
- compatibilty to traces of water
- autofluorescence
- long time storage
- ability to hold the cover slip
- specimen penetration
....

Typical mountants are Canadabalsam, Euparal, Malinol, Entellan, Histokitt, Pleurax. None of them is universal.

Bob

thanks bob. I am going to buy some nail polish. I heard about tree sap products. for now i'm mostly mounting insects. Can you make a slide that preserves plant cells?

For insect parts Hoyers medium is good.

Plant parts can't just be dunked into a mountant. Usually you use a fixative like AFE mix, transfer into the right intermedium Isopropanol and then mount into Euparal.