DESY
IUCrJ
Rapid sample delivery for megahertz serial crystallography at X-ray FELs
Introduction
X-ray crystallography is an important tool for structure determination in material and biological science. Bright X-Ray sources like the Free electron laser at DESY in Hamburg can deliver intense X-Ray beams on very short timescales that allow probing of crystal structure on very small sample sizes.
Due to the nature of the X-Ray sources researchers require new means of sample delivery to the probe region. Here researchers developed means to deliver liquid streams of protein crystals to the interaction region while observing X-Ray diffraction as well as high speed optical imaging. In vacuum CCD cameras are used to collect the diffraction patterns.
