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New Method on Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) Samples Drying
Xu Xiuping1, Meng Shuchun2, Feng Min1*
1State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093,China;
2Beijing Vegetable Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agricultue and Forestry, Beijing 100097, China
2Beijing Vegetable Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agricultue and Forestry, Beijing 100097, China
Abstract: As an effective method to observe surface ultra-structures of plant samples， the scanning electron microscope requests most of the fresh plant samples to be dehydrated before final observation. Based on the general tert-butanol method， we created one new technique by deleting the traditional fixation， dehydration and substitution steps from the protocol， named it as one step tert-butanol freeze-drying. Our results showed that samples dried by this new method hold their original surface features without shrinkage. The comparison of sample dehydration among CO2 critical point drying， the normal tert-butanol freeze-drying and our new way indicated that almost no difference could be detected， except the last one is much easier to carry out. Different plant samples were also tested by this new dehydration to prove its feasibility for different sample types furthermore.
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