Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme
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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik
MO 11: Posters 2: Novelties in Molecular Physics
MO 11.21: Poster
Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 17:00–19:00, C/Foyer
Optical guiding of single particles for diffractive imaging with x-ray free electron lasers — •Salah Awel1,2, Rick Kirian1, Niko Eckerskorn3, Andrei Rode3, Jochen Küpper1,2, and Henry Chapman1,2 — 1Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, DESY, Hamburg — 2Center for Ultrafast Imaging, University of Hamburg Department of Physics — 3Australian National University
The availability of brief, intense, and coherent x-ray pulses produced by x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) has created the potential for major advancements in macromolecular structure determination. Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) is among the most successful paradigms to emerge. It consists of directing a stream of randomly oriented protein microcrystals, cell, virus or molecules across the focus of the XFEL beam. However, delivering single particles to a sub-micron x-ray focus remains a considerable challenge. Current sample delivery efficiency for single-particle imaging based on aerodynamic lens systems are on the order of 10−7 on average, which renders experiments infeasible for samples that cannot be obtained in high abundance. In order to confront this challenge, we are developing techniques for manipulating aerosolized nanoparticles with specially shaped laser illumination [1]. Our experiments are presently aimed at transversely confining streams of particles as they exit an aerosol injector, with a counter-propagating “hollow” quasi-Bessel beam. The experiment exploits radiation pressure and thermal (photophoretic) forces arising from the interaction of the particles with surrounding gas.
[1] Opt. Exp. 21, 30492-30499 (2013)