Re: Using Sapphire Cover Slip with a Confocal Microscope

From: Philip (pcywong_at_stanford.edu)
Date: 03/23/05 

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:36:12 -0800

> The problem is 1mm to 2mm of anything is way to much. Remember objectives
> are designed to use 0.17mm. The more NA you use the more critical the cover
> glass thickness is. How much magnification and NA do you need? If you need
> a lot of both the proposed cover glass won't work.
>
> However one way out of this is a long working distance 40X. These are
> usually used for inverted microscopes to see through plastic however since
> they are very adjustable I bet they would work with what you propose. The
> problem with these are that NA is lower and 40X is as much mag as your gonna
> get.
>
> Have you guys ever thought about Leitz UMM type objectives? These are used
> in geology to observe specimens in three dimensions so they use rather thick
> semi-ball shaped cover glass. Zeiss makes them as well. There kinda rare
> but it sounds like your in the rare business!
>
> Kevin Cunningham
> SMS
>
>
>

I planned to try it out with a 20x objective with a 3500 microns working
distance. Depending on what we see (or don't see), we might purchase a
lens with an even larger working distance.

So will the conlusion change with say a 2 photon?

philip