[Spm] RE: Spm Digest, Vol 40, Issue 2

[Alexandre Berquand]

Good afternoon,

I think I can answer precisely your question since I've been working on lipid bilayers tethered on mica during 5 years.
1) The 1st thing you have to know is that you must keep your mica sheets in a dry place (for instance a small cabinet with silica gel) otherwise the sheet can easily get polluted or hydrated.
2) You have several muscovite mica providers. The 3 best are:
	Metafix
	EMS (designed at the origin for optical measurements) having various quality from V1 to V5. V1 is the best.
	Good Fellow. I especially recommend this last one for lipid bilayers.
3) There is only one way to obtain plane and homogeneous mica sheets: use a punch, and only push once and brutally (if you try to do it in several steps, you will damage your disk and the surface won't be homogeneous). Don't try to cut it with scissors or whatever... Those punches are not easy to find. There is a Canadian manufacturer called Newman tools.
4) There is only one way to cleave the mica: use a double face tape and cleave it quickly. Then have a look at your tape under light and see if you have a bright homogeneous disk. This might take you one test as well as 50 times, depending on the mica quality. Then you should immediately put the mica disk in liquid since it can be very quickly contaminate.
5) Beyond this, you have to master the parameters for fusion of vesicles or Langmuir-Blodgett transfer, but that's another story.
If this is not enough, feel free to contact me directly or by the forum.
Greetings,

Alexandre
  

Alexandre Berquand, PhD

Life Science Application Engineer

Veeco Instruments - Europe

Solutions for a nanoscale world(tm)

Dynamostrasse 19

D-68165 Mannheim

(:     +49 621 84210 69

Fax:   +49 621 84210 22

email: aberquand at veeco.de

 

Registergericht Mannheim HRB 10094 - Geschäftsführer Francis Steenbeke

www.veeco-europe.com

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Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 10:43 AM
To: SPM Forum
Subject: Spm Digest, Vol 40, Issue 2

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Today's Topics:

   1. mica sheets (Gerard Oncins Marco)


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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:25:33 +0100
From: Gerard Oncins Marco <goncins at ub.edu>
Subject: [Spm] mica sheets
To: "digest <\"\" \">" <spm\"@spmlist.di.com>
Message-ID: <4732E41D.9000305 at ub.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hi everybody,
I am searching for highest quality mica to use it as a substrate for 
depositing biological samples (phospholipid bilayers, fatty acids, etc). 
We have been buying mica sheets for a while but I am not sure which is 
the best way to cut it into small pieces that fit inside our mmode head 
(when using a blade the sides of the mica piece flake and it's sort of a 
mess). Any advice about how to circumvent this problem will be really 
welcome.
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