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Fast Times at ESRF

Highlights of the June, 1994 issue of the ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility) Newsletter included reports of a Laue diffraction pattern from a lysozyme protein recorded on a single 50 ps pulse and surface diffraction experiments on a 2x1 Ge (001) surface yielding intensity of 1.2xl05 ph/s. A team from ESRF and CARS at University of Chicago gathered Laue patterns with a ~50 ps X-ray pulse from the BL3 wundulator. The protein produced 206 reflections at 2.2 Å resolution over the energy range 7-82 KeV. The exposure is expected to break the radiation damage barrier (D. Bourgeouis et al.). High quality structural data have been obtained from single crystals of hydrogen and helium up to 45 and 50 GPa, respectively (1 GPa = 10 kbar). In a joint project involving ESRF, U. Paris VI, Geophysical Lab. in Washington and Oxford U., single crystals were grown in situ in diamond-anvil cells specially designed for these experiments and reflections were measured by single-crystal energy-dispersive diffraction, a technique which consists in rotating the cell around two perpendicular axes w and c while "software scanning" the energy spectra received from a fast multichannel analyzer connected to a germanium detector set at a fixed angle (D. Häusermann et al.).

From ESRF Newsletter