High-speed raster-scanning synchrotron serial microcrystallography with a high-precision piezo-scanner

The Frontier Microfocus Macromolecular Crystallography (FMX) beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II with its 1   µ m beam size and photon flux of 3 × 1012 photons   s − 1 at a photon energy of 12.66   keV has reached unprecedented dose rates for a structural biology beamline. The high dose rate presents a great advantage for serial microcrystallography in cutting measurement time from hours to minutes. To provide the instrumentation basis for such measurements at the full flux of the FMX beamline, a high-speed, high-precision goniometer based on a unique XYZ piezo positioner has been designed and constructed. The piezo-based goniometer is able to achieve sub-100   nm raster-scanning precision at over 10 grid-linepairs   s − 1 frequency for fly scans of a 200   µ m-wide raster. The performance of the scanner in both laboratory and serial crystallography measurements up to the maximum frame rate of 750   Hz of the Eiger 16M's 4M region-of-interest mode has been verified in this work. This unprecedented experimental speed significantly reduces serial-crystallography data collection time at synchrotrons, allowing utilization of the full brightness of the emerging synchrotron radiation facilities.
Source: Journal of Synchrotron Radiation - Category: Physics Authors: Tags: macromolecular crystallography nano-positioning serial crystallography raster-scanning high-precision goniometer research papers Source Type: research