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Obtain better results effortlessly with the easily implemented and highly effective CERES Ice Shield.
CERES Ice Shield
The ultimate protection against ice contamination during lamellae preparation
Minimize ice growth during lamellae preparation
Did you know that the typical 50 nm/hour ice growth rate accepted by cryo-FIB providers would mean your 150 nm lamella could become several times thicker at the end of a sample preparation session?
CERES Ice Shield is liquid nitrogen-cooled and provides cryo-pumping to lower the partial pressure of water in the chamber and sample vicinity, thus reducing amorphous ice growth to a minimum level. With the patented, innovative cryo shutter design, your cryo sample is particularly shielded from the contamination originating from the electron column, and therefore preventing condensation on the sample. With the >7-fold decrease in ice contamination rate, you can prepare many more lamellae before the first lamella becomes covered in ice.
This work is supported by the European SME2 grant № 879673.
Easy integration for complete protection
The CERES Ice Shield consists of a high precision cryo shutter that inserts between the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) pole piece and the sample. This shields the sample from ice contamination originating from the SEM column while also increasing the local vacuum through cryo-pumping (Tacke et al., 2021). The innovative shutter design comes with a hole that allows FIB milling while the shutter is inserted, fully protecting the sample during lamellae fabrication.
Key advantages of CERES Ice Shield
Small adjustment with big impact
Better quality cryo-electron tomography data
Get the best quality data from your cryo sample by minimising ice growth during lamella-milling.
Achieve better resolution
Make more lamellae in one session without worrying about ice contamination. Achieve higher resolution by increasing your sample throughput and lamella quality.
Optimize the whole cryo-electron microscopy workflow
Reduce transfer steps and streamline your Cryo-ET sample preparation workflow by combining combining CERES Ice Shield with METEOR: Delmic's integrated fluorescence microscope.
A solution for secure lamella preparation
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology
UT Southwestern Medical Center
New York Structural Biology Center
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology
We streamlined the cryo-FIB/SEM automation process and are enabled to polish our lamellae automatically to a thickness of less than 150 nm.
Dr. Sebastian Tacke – Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, Germany.
UT Southwestern Medical Center
The CERES Ice Shield takes away my worries about ice contamination and allows me to take my time during polishing of the lamellae
Evan Reetz – UT Southwestern Medical Center, USA.
New York Structural Biology Center
After installation, the contamination rate dropped sufficiently enough to reliably have clean lamellae after AutoTEM overnight milling, allowing for ~12 waffle lamellae to be milled per an 8 hour work day
Dr. Alex Noble – New York Structural Biology Center, USA.
Blog highlight
Protecting lamellae from ice contamination during milling in the cryo-ET workflow
Talk to an expert
CERES Ice Shield protects your samples against ice contamination during lamellae preparation. Get in touch with our experts to discover how your research can benefit.
