-Some of the components can be reused. To reuse the plastic dish, remove the agarose hydrogel
from the dish. If oil immersion objectives were used, cut out the coverslip with a diamond pen. Let
the dish soak in ethanol for a few days to solve the sticky tape. Remove coverslip and sticky tape.
Let dry and reuse. We use dishes approximately 30 times. To reuse the PDMS stamp, wash with
deionized water, let dry. Treat with air plasma and reuse. We use stamps approximately 30 times.
- Lid heater: We set the air conditioning of the room to 20°C and the lid temperature to 25.5°C.
The temperature inside the agar slab then is 24.5°C. A lid heater is only necessary for inverted
microscopes. The lid heater provides a temperature gradient inside the dish with a cool bottom
and a hot lid. It prevents fogging of the glass window and drying out of the sample. For upright
microscopes, there automatically is a temperature gradient. Because the agarose ‘hangs” on the
slightly warmer lid no condensation on the bottom is observed. Inverted microscopes currently
offer the highest precision autofocus options.