Consideration in the choice of a wavelength range for white-beam Laue diffraction.
The white-beam Laue-diffraction method is a useful tool for rapid measurement of crystallographic intensities with synchrotron radiation. Considerations of the signal-to-noise ratio to be expected from scattering of X-rays within a limited wavelength range suggest that it will pay to limit that range to something like an octave. This rule-of-thumb has the added advantage that there will be significantly fewer diffraction spots that are overlapping harmonics of one another. To maximize the number of reflections recorded in a single stationary-crystal exposure, one should choose this octave of wavelengths in a region where the curvature of the Ewald sphere is greatest, that is at the longest wavelength allowable after other considerations are taken into account.
Sweet
R M
RM
Biology Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.
Singer
P T
PT
Smalås
A
A