The ACA meeting has come and gone, and ECM is just around the corner—tempus fugit.
ACA in Denver was a lot of fun, and the nearly perfect weather sharply contrasted to the hurricane that hit Houston while we were in Denver. The office was undamaged, although we lost power for a couple of days. The good news is that we are up and running again.
ACA was both fun and enlightening. As usual, the science was fantastic and it was great to see many old friends and meet new ones. We had a full crew at the booth as you can see from the photos of the opening reception below.
shares information and fosters discussion about X-ray crystallography and SAXS topics. Connect with other research groups and receive updates on how they use these techniques in their own laboratories. You can also catch up on the latest newsletter or Rigaku Journal issue. We also hope that you will share information about your own research and laboratory groups.
At rigakuxrayforum.comyou can find discussions about software, general crystallography issues and more. It’s also the place to download the latest version of Rigaku Oxford Diffraction’sCrysAlisProsoftware for single crystal data processing.
Our mixer has become the extracurricular activity everyone wants a ticket for. Everyone had a great time and, to my surprise, no one fell in the pool!
Our product of the month is the HyPix-Arc 150°. Chris Schürmann provides the tip of the month: using the CrysAlisPro plotting tool. I was so busy this past month that I did not get to finish a book, although I did put a good dent in Stephen King’s latest: Some Like It Darker. I think Jeanette will be back next month with a review.
Joe Ferrara
Upcoming Webinar:
TOPIQ | The Support of Structural Science at Yale University
Thursday, July 25, 2024 at 9 AM CDT / 10 AM EDT
In this webinar, Brandon Q. Mercado, Ph.D. will explore the comprehensive support for the advancement of structural science provided by The Chemical and Biophysical Instrumentation Center in the Chemistry Department at Yale University. His facility is equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation, including single crystal X-ray diffractometers, powder diffractometers, small/wide-angle X-ray scattering systems, and micro-computed tomography (microCT). These resources enable scientists to conduct detailed analyses of crystalline structures, powders, and complex materials, facilitating a broad range of scientific investigations. Additionally, he is excited to announce the upcoming addition of an electron diffractometer, which will further enhance our capabilities. Brandon will share preliminary results obtained in collaboration with Rigaku and discuss the relevance to ongoing research projects, demonstrating the potential to obtain high-resolution, impactful structural data with electron diffractometers. This presentation aims to highlight the pivotal role his core facility plays in supporting cutting-edge structural science, fostering innovation, and driving scientific discovery within the university setting.
The HyPix-Arc 150° is a curved Hybrid Photon Counting (HPC) X-ray detector for single crystal diffraction applications. HyPix-Arc 150° has the highest 2θ range at a single position available for the home lab. Collect more data in a single exposure with less reflection profile distortion: The HyPix-Arc 150° offers 150 degrees angular coverage from edge to edge. This is more than enough to collect complete single crystal diffraction data, according to IUCr guidelines, for even Cu Kα X-ray wavelength from a single theta position.
HyPix-Arc 150° Overview
High and low angle data are measured at the same time, under the same conditions for better scaling, faster data and reduced dose time. A curved detector minimizes peak distortion by ensuring that, even at short crystal-to-detector distances, diffracted beams are closer to perpendicular than is possible with a flat geometry.
Like all HPC detectors, the HyPix-Arc 150° offers direct X-ray photon counting for every photon, single pixel top-hat point spread function with no readout noise and no dark noise. The 100 micron pixel size allows better resolution of reflections for long unit cells as well as improving reflection profile analysis. The HyPix-Arc 150° has a high frame rate of 100 Hz, as well as a Zero Dead Time mode providing the ultimate in error-free shutterless data collection.
The advantage of direct detection found in the HyPix-Arc 150° is that no phosphor is required and the size of the pixel determines the point spread function rather than the blooming that occurs on detectors with a phosphor. This means that reflections are sharper and more easily resolved. Profile analysis will not require incorporating additional pixels to compensate for phosphor blooming leading to less experimental noise, such as air scatter, being incorporated into a reflection. As opposed to monolithic detectors, such as CMOS-based CPADs, a hybrid detector separates the detection area from the read-out electronics. This means that the full area of a pixel is sensitive to incoming X-ray photons, with the charge being transmitted through an indium bump bond to a secondary readout pixel. In APS-CMOS/CPAD detectors, each pixel contains in-pixel readout electronics that come at the expense of light sensitive area. Monolithic detectors used in crystallography often have a 30% dead area or detection-gap per pixel that occurs through the whole detector.
The HyPix-Arc 150° is the perfect detector for measuring diffraction from small and poorly diffracting samples due to the extremely low noise characteristics: you can count as long as you need to without the dark current or noise build up seen in other detectors. When your crystals diffract well, the high frame rate and Zero Dead Time mode mean that you can collect data extremely fast and accurately in a shutterless mode.
The live plotting tool is a slightly hidden but nevertheless useful and very versatile tool in CrysAlisPro. The tool can be found with the X-ray options in the online version of CrysAlisPro.
After opening the Plotting tool, the source of the data needs to be selected. This can be either the clipboard or any file. The files may be any type of output logs from CrysAlisPro or ASCII data array. Of course, files from CrysAlisPro` work best. Data logs are generally stored with the DAT file extension. X-ray source logs can be created with the neighboring “Start Log” Icon, Instrument data logs are generally located in the C:\Xcalibur\log folder, the experiment data logs in the experiment’s plots_dc folder, and the data reduction logs in the plots_red folder. Any one of these files can be opened with the Plotting tool. For example, we show here the scaling factor and the extracted powder pattern.
During the experiment, the experiment logs are continuously written or updated and therefore change on a regular basis. By clicking on the Update button on the top right corner of the plot, the plot can be easily updated to show the present, live data output.
So, the plotting tool can monitor any instrument stats live and provides innummerable possibilities for the creative user to better understand and monitor the workings of their instruments.
