The vibrating blade microtome is used to produce monolayer or thick sections of fixed or fresh tissue under physiological conditions without freezing or embedding.
At the EM Unit the device is used mostly for preparing sections of agarose embedded, fixed or unfixed samples for high pressure freezing.  Additional applications for this instrument include immunohistochemistry, cell culturing of different organs, electrophysiology, free floating sections and many other applications, resulting in high-quality sections.
During operation, the blade vibrates laterally and advances forward through the specimen. Other parameters that influence section quality are amplitude, frequency, knife travel speed and blade angle.