The cross section of the shell of a deep-sea cold-seep clam collected from Tenryu submarine vallay (about 3300m in depth), Nankai Trough. The shell is mainly composed of calcium carbonate.

Upper: The shell before cutting.
Lower: The shell after cutting with the micro-dissector. Three grooves indicated by red arrows are the cut locations. These grooves are about 10 µm in width.

With a fine metal tip vibrating at a high frequency and low amplitude, a micron-sized tip (typically 10 µm in size) is cut out from a sample surface. The isolated tip is collected by a micro-pipette.

The micro-dissector is mainly used for preparation of biological and medical studies. Of course, it is capable of cutting of enviromental solid samples for chemical analyses.