AURION R-Gent SE-EM are high efficiency silver enhancement reagents for electron microscopy. These intensify the gold particles by homogeneous deposition of metallic silver on the particle surface. The resulting electron dense signal is easily detected and is compatible with heavy metal counterstaining.

These reagents have extremely delayed auto-nucleation and can be used under standard laboratory light conditions. These also have low viscosity, which are especially advantageous for pre-embedding immunogold applications. The enhancement mixture has a pH of 8.1 to 8.2. These has been tested intensively for the enhancement of AURION ultra-small immunogold reagents.

The silver enhancement reaction is a gold particle-catalyzed reduction in which silver ions are reduced to metallic silver with a photographic developing compound as the electron source. In addition, in many applications a protective colloid is added to the enhancement solution to limit diffusion of reagents to the gold particle surface, thus providing a means for controlling particle growth.

For most applications the detection of ultra-small gold particles in electron microscopy requires a particle enhancement procedure. Danscher’s method has always been the standard for this purpose.

The goal in the development of AURION R-Gent SE-EM was to create a new system with enhancement efficiency and homogeneity at least comparable to Danscher’s method, but with reduced acidity and light sensitivity. In addition, the reagents should have low viscosity for the suitability in pre-embedding immunogold labeling.