Related Experiment Videos
Serial snapshot crystallography for materials science with SwissFEL
Catherine Dejoie1, Stef Smeets1, Christian Baerlocher1
1Laboratory of Crystallography, ETH Zurich , Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 5, Zurich, 8093, Switzerland.
Iucrj
|May 22, 2015
Summary
The Swiss X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) will enable new studies of microcrystalline materials. Experiments show it can reliably collect diffraction data from multiple crystals in single snapshots for structure determination.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Crystallography
- X-ray Physics
Background:
- Studying microcrystalline materials with small unit cells is challenging.
- Upcoming X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) facilities offer new experimental possibilities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the feasibility of using the Swiss X-ray Free Electron Laser (SwissFEL) for microcrystalline material analysis.
- To demonstrate reliable data collection and structure determination from small crystals using XFEL.
Main Methods:
- Synchrotron-based experiments mimicking SwissFEL's 4% energy bandpass mode.
- Recording diffraction patterns from randomly oriented microcrystals in single snapshots.
- Combining data from multiple snapshots to assemble complete datasets.
Main Results:
- Successfully recorded diffraction patterns from up to 10 crystals per snapshot.
- Demonstrated reliable indexing of reflections and extraction of intensities.
- Showed that complete crystal structure data can be assembled from multiple snapshots.
Conclusions:
- SwissFEL will open new avenues for studying challenging organic and inorganic microcrystalline materials.
- Even single XFEL shots allow partial crystal structure analysis, with potential for time-resolved studies using femtosecond pulses.