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I would like to thanks to everyone that took a few minutes to answer to my question. The original query is bellow: Hello everybody, I would like to know which seal is best to seal deep wells with crystallization screens for long term storage (up to six months). Are thermo seals better than cold seals? I would appreciate if people could tell me which seal they use, and at which temperature. Thank you all in advance, Mario Sanches ############## Those are the answers that I received: We did extensive testing for this using caps, mat caps, tape, adhesive foil, heat seal plastic, heat seal foil and the best way by far is heat seal foil. It looks like the only loss we had was through the plastic of the plate not through the foil while we had significant loss with the other methods. We use Easy Peel heat seal from Abgene. James M. Vergis, Ph.D. ### hi mario, we use the silicon mats that fit our deep wells and store the deep wells at -20. usually we prepare 4 or 5 deep wells at a go. when needed, we thaw one deep well and transfer the complete content to some 15 96well crystallization plates. these, again, we freeze at -20 (sealed with crystal clear film) and thaw one by one as needed. the freezing of the greiner plates is a bit trickier because you have to avoid condensation on the sealing film. this condensation would eventually fall onto the crystallization benches. but once you have that figured out it is not a problem. there are tricks for that ... cheers ingo ### Dear Mario, at present we are using both aluminium sealing film from Axygen (catalog no. 732-0658) and the ultra-clear sealing film from Axygen (cat. no. 732-0657). They are both certified to resist from -10 to +100°C, but we found that the aluminium reacts with a few reagents from the Hampton Xtal Screen, that's why we use the ultraclear for sealing those screens. We normally store the screens at 4°C, but they do not last for more than 2 months (this is our turn-over). Our policy is to buy the 10ml screens in 14ml centrifuge tubes, and manually fill in two deep-wells at a time (each one lasts for 10 nanoscreens). So we keep the screens in the tubes for as long as possible. I hope this helped Adriana ### Hi Mario We use aluminium adhesive seals (PCR seals - ABgene AB0626) since they are nice and sticky and deform slightly into the well to give a good seal, but can also be removed quite easily. For long term storage they go at 4degrees. The cap-mats are terrible, dont use them since they dont seal very well and volatiles such as isopropanol will disappear very quickly. Hope this helps. Tom Walter B.Sc. M.Res. ### Few free to send more comments if you like. Thanks to all again, -- Mario Sanches Laboratório Nacional de Luz Síncrotron Cristalografia e Espectroscopia de Biomoléculas Tel: +55 19 3512 1275