What you think of as a slicer can only cut these:
Wax mass tissue (first and second from left) and frozen tissue (first from right)
However, in practice our slicers can also cut:
Polymer material block
In fact, the application of slicing in the field of polymer materials is not uncommon, common slicing equipment is ultramicrotome and frozen ultramicrotomy, these equipment can make nanoscale polymer material flakes. Because the ultra-thin sectioning accuracy requirements are high, the price of the equipment is also very high, so the requirements for the operator are also very demanding, and the cost of a single experiment is also high.
Blade cutting, wire cutting, and freeze breaking are also common ways to slice polymer materials. Because the blade cutting is a purely manual operation, it is easy to cause knife marks or even unevenness in the material section; Although freeze fracture can avoid knife marks, the applicable material types are limited, and this method is not suitable for some materials that are resistant to ultra-low temperatures.
In general, the processing accuracy of the above three polymer materials is relatively low, and the uniformity of section flatness or slice thickness cannot be well guaranteed. If you use a light lens to capture the topography of the surface of the material, the overall sharpness of the photo may be greatly reduced.
Now, the Riward microtome is capable of slicing a wide range of polymer materials!
Riward microtome can have a minimum section thickness of up to 2 μm (the minimum section thickness varies by material). The sliced thin sheet can be observed by optical microscopes such as polarizing light microscopy and metallographic microscope.
Table of tile criteria
Let's take a look at the real slice case of Riward slice~
Customer Story One
Professor Geng Lihong from the School of Engineering of Fujian University of Technology is currently mainly engaged in the preparation and application of nanocellulose hydrogels. In the process of research, they needed to slice the polymer material and observe the internal structure of nanocellulose under polarized thermal stage microscopy. In the past, they used to use razors to manually slice the cellulose material, but this manual sectioning method could not ensure the consistency of the sample sheets, some areas were thick, and some areas were thin; In addition, because it is a manual slice, the manual slice is prone to shaking and pause, which will leave very obvious scratches on the sheet.
In order to overcome the technical problems of production, Professor Geng Lihong learned that the stability of Riward microtomes on the market is very good and the slicing effect is very good, so he contacted Riward application engineers. The engineers used the Riward rotary microtome to smoothly cut out 10 μm sections of carbon nanotubes, and the thin sheets could clearly observe the crystal morphology and conductive path in the material under a hot stage polarizing microscope.
Physical drawing
Mirror below
Customer Story Two
A customer in Jiangsu plans to produce a PE infusion bag film composed of seven layers of material, in order to better control the production quality of the film, the customer needs to sample the production line film to confirm whether the distribution of the seven layers of material meets the quality standards. The customer initially used scissors to cut to obtain the cross-section of the film, but the cross-section was curled so badly that the boundaries of the PE cross-section material could not be distinguished at all. Later, the method of manual cutting of the blade was used, and the effect was still not good.
In desperation, the customer learned through the network information that the Riward slicer had a good effect in the application of material slicing, so he immediately contacted the application engineer of Riward. Unsure whether the softer film could be produced by a microtome, the customer sent the film to Riewold's application engineers for trial cutting. After fixing the film using OCT, a water-soluble mixture of polyethylene glycol and polyvinyl alcohol, Revold engineers successfully cut 30 μm uncurled film flakes with a Riward frozen microtome. Under the metallographic microscope, the boundary between the seven layers of material in the film section is clear, and the PE film section does not curl at all. Customer feedback: "The results are good".
in a slice
Mirror below
Customer usage feedback
The Riward slicer is now available
Polymer material trial cutting activity!!
If you also have the need for polymer material slicing, welcome to contact Xiaobian to register, we will arrange professional slice engineers to cut samples for you.
The first 20 places will be offered free trial cutting services
Hurry up and contact the editor to register~