News

Nikon Instruments Inc., a leader in the development of advanced optical microscopy, today announced a leap in optical technology with the addition of the new CFI Plan Achromat 100X Water Dipping lens to their line of optics for advanced biomedical research.

The new CFI Plan Achromat 100X Water dipping lens elevates combinatorial research applications to a new level, and is the ideal choice for simultaneous patch clamp electrophysiology, combined with confocal or multi-photon imaging. The lens has 100X magnification, a numerical aperture of 1.1, working distance of 2.5mm, and a cone angle of 22 degrees. These specifications make this lens the most powerful tool available to patch-clamp small structures such as dendrites, axons, or synaptic boutons. Additionally, the lens has a unique correction collar, which can be utilized to eliminate spherical aberration induced by optically dense specimens or working at physiological temperatures.

Correcting for spherical aberration results in a perfect point spread function under real life experimental conditions, facilitating acquisition of the sharpest confocal and multi-photon images possible. Furthermore, designed with today's cutting edge applications in mind, the CFI Plan Achromat 100X Water dipping lens has extremely high transmission in the IR, making it ideal for multi-photon applications. During Nikon's rigorous development process, a leading neuroscientist evaluating the lens was quoted as saying, "The 100X 1.1NA lens is the best lens that we've used for our two-photon system -- and we've used quite a few."