Ionscope Scanning Ion Conductance Microscope System
Scan Head
The Ionscope scan head component of the Scanning Ion Conductance Microscope system offers a state-of-the-art closed-loop flexure scan system that ensures accurate measurements, low noise levels and sub-nanometre resolution.
With an XY scan range of 100 μm on sample and a Z scan range of 25 μm on pipette (with capability to extend), it is suited for imaging both living cells and materials.
The Ionscope scan head has the largest useful sample stage travel available on the market, which allows up to 25 mm movement while maintaining nanometre positioning accuracy.
The scan head fits a wide variety of modern models of inverted microscopes. The scan head integrates seamlessly with many complementary techniques including confocal microscopy, SECM and electrophysiology to provide further depth to your analysis.
Controllers
The main controller can be purchased as part of a complete Scanning Ion Conductance Microscope (SICM) system or separately as the controller for your own scan head.
It interfaces the control and feedback signals, ion current signal from current amplifier (internal or external), positioning signals from the piezo nano-positioning stages and the DC-motors in the scan head, to an advanced multi-loop control system.
Additional interfaces are available on the controller front panel to allow, for example, a signal to be brought from an external measuring device into the controller for capture in synchronisation with the detection of the threshold ion current.
User Interface
The graphical user interface provides all the control and diagnostic functions and the display of measurement results for the Scanning Ion Conductance Microscope (SICM) system. GUI provides for configuration, control, measurement, display and diagnostics under a set of easy-to-navigate screens.
It also provides for database storage of all results collected by the system, which can be easily searched by user name, date, and measurement type.
The measurement results can be displayed in either a 2D topography with interactive XY cursors to display the measured Z value, or as a dynamic 3D image which can be viewed from a range of angles and perspectives.
The user interface controls the raster scan in Ionscope hopping mode and supports the additional features such as approach curve and manual approach.