Miniature patch clamp amplifier

Sophion Bioscience develops custom made patch clamp amplifiers. They feature automatic compensation for series resistance (Rs) and cell capacitance (Cslow), and up to 300 nA maximal current measured, depending on amplifier type.

From the platform of the screening station, a "bed-of-nails" connects the patch clamp electrodes with the amplifier front ends. This distance is kept minimal to reduce any noise pick-up from the surroundings.

Several parallel patch clamp amplifiers are implemented on a standard printed circuit board, enabling all amplifiers to be positioned near the patch clamp electrodes. Due to their small size these amplifiers are ideally suited for extensive parallelism and provide considerable scalability.

100 % Rseries compensation
The QPatch amplifiers provide a unique series resistance (Rseries) compensation feature that contributes to high quality recordings. This feature allows for 100% Rs compensation. Typically, patch clamp amplifiers are capable of compensating 50 - 95% of Rs, but oscillations occur at the higher compensation percentages. The unique technology employed by the QPatch amplifiers provides 100% Rs compensation without oscillations. This feature prevents the possibility of false positives due to Rseries voltage errors.

The latest improvements (see illustration) allow full Rs compensation at a speed that accommodates even the fastest sodium ion channel. See the technical specifications below:

Sophion Bioscience has an exclusive license to this technology from Alembic Instruments. For more information about this technology, please refer to the Alembic Instruments website (http://www.alembicinstruments.com), or the paper: Series Resistance Compensation for Whole-Cell Patch-Clamp Studies Using a Membrane State Estimator.