Leica Microsystems: Leica Science Lab

Science Lab

The knowledge portal of Leica Microsystems offers scientific research and teaching material on the subjects of microscopy. The content is designed to support beginners, experienced practitioners and scientists alike in their everyday work and experiments. Explore interactive tutorials and application notes, discover the basics of microscopy as well as high-end technologies – become part of the Science Lab community and share your expertise!

Improve Your Ultramicrotomy Workflow with Automated Sectioning

Discover advanced digital ultramicrotomy tools for fast and accurate automated sectioning. Learn about autoalignment, and efficient sample trimming leveraging 3D µCT data. See application examples…

Camera image during auto alignment. The feedback lines indicate if the correct edges in the image are detected. Green: Vertical center line; Magenta: Upper edge of the light gap; White: Lower edge of the light gap (not visible here, falling together with red line); Red: Knife edge; Blue: Left and right edge of the block face being automatically detected.

Automatic Alignment of Sample and Knife for High Sectioning Quality

Automatic alignment of sample and knife on the ultramicrotome UC Enuity, enabling even untrained users to create ultrathin sections with reduced risk of losing precious sections.

Section ribbons with increasing section thickness - silver to purple ending in blue sections.

High Quality Sectioning in Ultramicrotomy

Discover the significance of achieving high-quality uniform sections with ultramicrotomy for precise imaging in electron microscopy.

Water Flea Daphnia imaged by Electron Microscopy. Courtesy of Mag. Dr. Gruber, University of Vienna, Austria

Streamline your EM Sample Preparation Workflow for Biological Applications

Master EM sample preparation, including ultramicrotomy, for life sciences in this expert eBook!

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) stained with osmium tetroxide (OsO4), sectioned with a DIATOME diamond knife at room temperature, and then imaged with HAADF TEM.

Ultramicrotomy Techniques for Materials Sectioning

Learn about ultramicrotomy for materials sectioning when investigating polymers and brittle materials with transmission (TEM) or scanning electron microscopy (SEM) or atomic force microscopy.

Introduction to Ultramicrotomy

When studying samples, to visualize their fine structure with nanometer scale resolution, most often electron microscopy is used. There are 2 types: scanning electron microscopy (SEM) which images the…

Array Tomography for SEM 3D Reconstruction

Array tomography (AT) is a 3D image reconstruction technique for high resolution, quantitative analysis of biological structures. For optimal results, ultrathin and ordered sections are an absolute…

Brief Introduction to Specimen Trimming

Before ultrathin sectioning a sample with an ultramicrotome it has to be pre-prepared. For this pre-preparation, special attention must be paid to the sample size (size of the section), location of…