Durcupan is a water-soluble

epoxy Epoxy is the family of basic components or cured end products of epoxy resins. Epoxy resins, also known as polyepoxides, are a class of reactive prepolymers and polymers which contain epoxide groups. The epoxide functional group is also coll ...

resin produced by the

Fluka FLUKA (FLUktuierende KAskade) is a fully integrated Monte Carlo method, Monte Carlo simulation package for the interaction and transport of particles and nuclei in matter. FLUKA has many applications in particle physics, High energy physics, hig ...

subsidiary of

Sigma-Aldrich Sigma-Aldrich (formally MilliporeSigma) is an American chemical, life science, and biotechnology company that is owned by the German chemical conglomerate Merck Group. Sigma-Aldrich was created in 1975 by the merger of Sigma Chemical Company a ...

. It is commonly used for embedding

electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...

samples in plastic so they may be sectioned (sliced thin) with a

microtome A microtome (from the Greek ''mikros'', meaning "small", and ''temnein'', meaning "to cut") is a cutting tool used to produce extremely thin slices of material known as ''sections''. Important in science, microtomes are used in microscopy, allow ...

and then imaged. Durcupan is notable for

refractive index In optics, the refractive index (or refraction index) of an optical medium is a dimensionless number that gives the indication of the light bending ability of that medium. The refractive index determines how much the path of light is bent, or ...

n_D²⁰ of 1.654, which is a very high value for epoxy resins.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , title=Polymer embedding for ultrathin slicing and optical nanoscopy of thick fluorescent samples. Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultäten der Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen , author=Punge, A. , date=2009 , url=https://d-nb.info/1000019918/34#page=44 , pages=34-35 , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170622085643/https://d-nb.info/1000019918/34 , archivedate=2017-06-22 , url-status=live Electron microscopy Synthetic resins