Science and Technology of Patch-Recording Electrodes

Patch recording, in its present form, was made possible by the discovery that under some circumstances the membrane of a cell can seal extraordinarily tightly to the tip of a glass microelectrode. Because the seal is electrically tight, electrical noise is reduced by several orders of magnitude. Because the glass-membrane bond is mechanically strong, the patch of membrane spanning the tip may be isolated from the cell, or the patch may be ruptured to create access to the inside of the cell. This chapter deals with the properties of glasses and cell membranes that make such a seal occur (the “science”) and describes in detail the construction of micropipettes for patch recording (the “ technology”).