Laboratory of Crystallography, ETH Zurich , Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 5, Zurich, 8093, Switzerland.
Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
IUCrJ. 2015 Apr 21;2(Pt 3):361-70. doi: 10.1107/S2052252515006740. eCollection 2015 May 1.
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.
当瑞士正在建造的自由电子 X 射线激光（XFEL）于 2017 年投入使用时，研究具有小单元的（亚）微晶材料的新机会将出现，无论是有机还是无机材料。我们基于同步加速器的实验模拟了瑞士 FEL 光束的 4%-能带通模式，结果表明，有可能在单个快照中记录多达 10 个随机取向晶体的衍射图案，对得到的反射进行索引，并可靠地提取它们的强度。每个 XFEL 脉冲都会破坏晶体，但通过组合来自几组晶体的快照，可以组装完整的数据，并且原本难以分析的材料的晶体结构将变得可以访问。即使只有一次闪光，也至少可以对晶体结构进行部分分析，而使用 10-50 飞秒脉冲，则为时间分辨研究提供了诱人的可能性。
