Commission Science Images by SEM Images specialist PSmicrographs

Thank you for your enquiry. We would need to know exactly what you require when doing commission work but we can give you an indication of cost and time taken to do the work.

Processing a supplied sample ‐ £50 per hour. This would typically include cleaning in organic solvents, and/or ultrasonic cleaning, fixing, dehydrating using alcohol and acetone series, critical point drying, mounting on a stub, gold or palladium sputter coating and making ready for imaging on SEM. 1-6 samples of the same material typically takes 7 hours. Various and differing techniques would be used depending on the sample. Setting up and imaging on the SEM ‐ £65 per hour. It would typically take around 1 hour for 1 sample, further samples would be 30 minutes each. The SEM takes 6 samples, so one full compliment of 6 samples would take around 3.5 hours. More than 6 samples would mean setting up the SEM again so the first of the next set up would again take 1 hour. So, if you wanted 3 samples imaged, this would be 2 hours use of the SEM @ £65 per hour.

All images are sized and processed at no extra charge unless the customer requires false colour. As you know an SEM image is black and white and some customers prefer their images to be coloured. The cost depends on the complexity of the image. A typical image would take a colourist between 1 and 8 hours and is charged at £50 an hour. See sample images enclosed.

If you wanted one sample prepared and imaged on the SEM, it would cost 7 x £50 for the preparation and £65 for the imaging. If you wanted 3 samples (of the same material) it would cost 7 x £50 for the preparation and £130 for the imaging. Colouring would be extra @ £50 per hour per image. The customer is paying for the preparation of the sample and the usage of the SEM and colouring if required. It is common for the technician to take a number of micrographs of a single sample which could have various suitable areas to image and the customer would be given all the images taken of that one sample. The customer can then decide if any of the images would benefit colouring.

This is just an example and we can adjust costs according to the type of sample, some being easier to handle than others. Generally, soft biological samples are more difficult to prepare and need special handling techniques. We hope this gives you an indication of what is involved and the likely costs. Please feel free to contact us if you need any more information. We have shown a few images to give you an idea of typical colouring costs and an example of an uncoloured image straight from the SEM.