1. Serial snapshot crystallography for materials science with SwissFEL
- Author
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Dejoie, Catherine, Smeets, Stef, Baerlocher, Christian, Tamura, Nobumichi, Pattison, Philip, Abela, Rafael, and McCusker, Lynne B
- Subjects
serial snapshot crystallography ,multi-microcrystal diffraction ,indexing ,broad-bandpass beam ,XFEL ,Atomic ,Molecular ,Nuclear ,Particle and Plasma Physics ,Condensed Matter Physics ,Physical Chemistry (incl. Structural) - Abstract
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.
- Published
- 2015