History and News
Our durable foam dewars were developed at the Advanced Light Source, a synchrotron facility of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Lawrence Berkeley Lab is operated by the University of California, and receives federal funding from the Department of Energy.
The first application of these vessels was for the transfer and processing of cryogenic samples for x-ray crystallography measurements. The foam vessels addressed the safety and performance problems inherent in low profile glass Dewar flasks. Filled with liquid nitrogen, such glass Dewar flasks are difficult to handle, and they shatter when dropped. This poses a serious hazard to personnel and equipment. Such accidents at LBNL have caused thousands of dollars of equipment damage, along with lost weeks of valuable research time.
In contrast, the patented (U.S. pat. no. 7,971,744) design of our foam dewar makes it easier to handle and safer to use than a traditional low profile glass Dewar. Also, because of its lower thermal mass, a foam vessel will cause less liquid nitrogen boiloff when it is filled. Additionally, it accumulates less frost during regular use, which can be a major problem with crystallography samples. With a foam dewar, less LN is consumed, and research proceeds more effectively.
Spearlab foam dewars have gained international acceptance as the preferred vessel for crystallography sample processing and transfer, being used in hundreds of laboratories worldwide.
Our foam dewars also can be used in many other fields of research, industry, or education. If you have an application that involves cryogenics, please tell us your particular needs, so that we may help you to engineer a solution.
-Jonathan D. Spear, director
Our cryogenic foam vessels are an inexpensive means to improve the safety and performance of your laboratory. Users of Spearlab foam dewars include the following highly regarded organizations:
- Scripps Research Institute
- The Molecular Biology Consortium
- Salk Institute
- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
- UC Irvine
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Genentech
- Argonne National Laboratory
- Cornell University
- Sunesis
- Case Western Reserve University
- CBR Institute for Biomedical Research (Harvard University)
- Pfizer
- University of Georgia
- Novartis
- La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology
- Gilead
- Merck Pharmaceuticals
- Brookhaven National Laboratory
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Yale University)
- Brown University
- UCLA
- Purdue University
- Western University of Health Sciences
- University of Illinois at Chicago
- Amgen
- Princeton University
- University of Michigan
- NC State University
- University of California Berkeley
- Harvard Medical School
- St. Vincent's Institute (Australia)
- Mayo Clinic
- Northwestern University
- University of Cincinnati
- Biogen IDEC
- University of Wisconsin
- Children's Hospital (Boston)
- Schering-Plough
- University of Manitoba (Canada)
- Australian Synchrotron Project
- University of Massachusetts
- University of Sydney (Australia)
- Louisiana State University
- Johnson & Johnson
- Rutgers University
- Glaxo Smith Kline
- University of Georgia
- Celgene / Sigma Pharmaceutical
- University of Washington
- The Ohio State University
- Rigaku America
- UC San Francisco
- University of Toledo
- UC Santa Barbara
- University of Pennsylvania
- Exelixis
- Cal State University Fullerton
- University of North Carolina
- Teledyne
- University of Toronto (Canada)
- deCODE
- Genzyme
- University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
- Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (Australia)
- JEOL
- Medical Research Council (U.K.)
- C.S.I.R.O. (Australia)
- Fisher Scientific
- University of Oxford (U.K.)
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- University of Illinois at Chicago
- Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel)
- University of Adelaide (Australia)
- National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Paul Scherrer Institut (Switzerland)
- Illinois Institute of Technology
- Johns Hopkins University