Bielecki Johan, Maia Filipe R N C, Mancuso Adrian P
European XFEL, Holzkoppel 4, 22869 Schenefeld, Germany.
Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, Husargatan 3 (Box 596), SE-75124 Uppsala, Sweden.
Struct Dyn. 2020 Aug 6;7(4):040901. doi: 10.1063/4.0000024. eCollection 2020 Jul.
X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) now routinely produce millijoule level pulses of x-ray photons with tens of femtoseconds duration. Such x-ray intensities gave rise to the idea that weakly scattering particles-perhaps single biomolecules or viruses-could be investigated free of radiation damage. Here, we examine elements from the past decade of so-called single particle imaging with hard XFELs. We look at the progress made to date and identify some future possible directions for the field. In particular, we summarize the presently achieved resolutions as well as identifying the bottlenecks and enabling technologies to future resolution improvement, which in turn enables application to samples of scientific interest.
X射线自由电子激光（XFELs）现在通常能产生持续时间为数十飞秒、能量为毫焦耳级别的X射线光子脉冲。如此高的X射线强度催生了一种想法，即或许可以在不造成辐射损伤的情况下研究弱散射粒子——比如单个生物分子或病毒。在这里，我们审视过去十年左右利用硬X射线自由电子激光进行所谓单粒子成像的相关内容。我们看看迄今所取得的进展，并确定该领域未来一些可能的发展方向。特别是，我们总结了目前已实现的分辨率，同时找出未来提高分辨率的瓶颈和使能技术，这反过来又能推动对具有科学研究价值的样本的应用。
