Low-Viscosity, Intermediate-Viscosity, and High-Viscosity Alternatives in the Family of Epoxy Resin Embedding Media...... Your Choice

The epoxy resins have been successfull as embedding media because of their demonstrated ability to preserve morphological detail, minimally extract cell components, infiltrate tissues, and polymerize uniformly without inducing shrinkage artifacts. These embedding media also produce blocks with favorable sectioning and staining qualities and sections capable of withstanding the heat and vacuum encountered in the electron microscope column. Many epoxy resins are available today and several have been evaluated in past works. The versatility of these resins allows them to be “matched” with various embedding media components (ie., DDSA, NMA, NSA, DMP-30, DMAE) in order to design a final embedding product with a predetermined viscosity. This work evaluates the resins Embed 812, LX112, Polybed 812, Eponate 12, and the traditional Epon 812 in “low”, “intermediate”, or “high” viscosity alternatives formulated with different combinations of anhydrides and catalysts. The anhydride NSA and the tertiary amine catalyst DMAE are more fluid and less viscous than their counterparts DDSA and DMP-30.