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Serial snapshot crystallography for materials science with SwissFEL

New opportunities for studying (sub)microcrystalline materials with small unit cells, both organic and inorganic, will open up when the X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) presently being constructed in Switzerland (SwissFEL) comes online in 2017. Our synchrotron-based experiments mimicking the 4%-ener...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dejoie, Catherine, Smeets, Stef, Baerlocher, Christian, Tamura, Nobumichi, Pattison, Philip, Abela, Rafael, McCusker, Lynne B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: International Union of Crystallography 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420546/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25995845
http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S2052252515006740
Descripción
Sumario:New opportunities for studying (sub)microcrystalline materials with small unit cells, both organic and inorganic, will open up when the X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) presently being constructed in Switzerland (SwissFEL) comes online in 2017. Our synchrotron-based experiments mimicking the 4%-energy-bandpass mode of the SwissFEL beam show that it will be possible to record a diffraction pattern of up to 10 randomly oriented crystals in a single snapshot, to index the resulting reflections, and to extract their intensities reliably. The crystals are destroyed with each XFEL pulse, but by combining snapshots from several sets of crystals, a complete set of data can be assembled, and crystal structures of materials that are difficult to analyze otherwise will become accessible. Even with a single shot, at least a partial analysis of the crystal structure will be possible, and with 10–50 femtosecond pulses, this offers tantalizing possibilities for time-resolved studies.