Lab users are responsible for fixing, drying, and mounting their specimens. To aid the user in specimen preparation, the SEM Lab has a critical point dryer, specimen mounts, and special adhesives. Lab personnel will be happy to consult with users about specimen preparation techniques and to provide instruction in the use of the critical point dryer. Sputter coating the samples with an alloy of 60% gold / 40% palladium is often advantageous and will be done by the lab operator at no additional expense. This results in a very thin, less than 4 nm, conductive coating. The lab provides an operator for the SEM. The user does not operate the microscope. However, it works best when the user can be present during the imaging their specimen. It is often difficult for the operator to know what specific information the user is needing to see from a specimen. Images obtained on the electron microscope are saved digitally as one megabyte TIFF files along with an associated text file containing information about the system parameters. These files can be transferred to a flash drive or CD in a wide variety of graphic file formats for use by the researcher.  An archive is preserved of all images.