title: Liquid sample delivery techniques for serial femtosecond crystallography.
abstract: X-ray free-electron lasers overcome the problem of radiation damage in protein crystallography and allow structure determination from micro- and nanocrystals at room temperature. To ensure that consecutive X-ray pulses do not probe previously exposed crystals, the sample needs to be replaced with the X-ray repetition rate, which ranges from 120 Hz at warm linac-based free-electron lasers to 1 MHz at superconducting linacs. Liquid injectors are therefore an essential part of a serial femtosecond crystallography experiment at an X-ray free-electron laser. Here, we compare different techniques of injecting microcrystals in solution into the pulsed X-ray beam in vacuum. Sample waste due to mismatch of the liquid flow rate to the X-ray repetition rate can be addressed through various techniques.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA weier@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Uwe
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Weierstall
mesh_terms: D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray / Q000379:methods*; D004583:Electrons; D007834:Lasers; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction / Q000379:methods*
keywords: X-ray free-electron laser; crystallography; liquid jets; serial femtosecond