Scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM) has been developed to image a smooth surface such as an active membrane of living cell that can be deformed or broken by the probe of microscope and also image a microstructure that floats inside the liquid.
However, the SICM have limits which the low response time due to the high time constant generated by the electrode and the pipette used as the ion sensor. In addition, because of specimens must be placed in aqueous solution, the imaging of specimens in air is impossible with SICM.
Therefore, to compensate the disadvantages of SICM resulted from the structural characteristics of SICM and to integrate with conventional atomic force microscope to cope with various kinds of specimens, we designed and fabricated the fundamental elements of the SICM including patch clamp amplifier. We also checked the output characteristics of the SICM and propose ways to get a stable signal output.