PHOTON SCIENCE

The Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SFX) Consortium works with the ‘Single Particles, Clusters and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography‘ (SPB/SFX) instrument of the European XFEL to develop and provide instrumentation and methodology for structure determination using intense XFEL pulses. This consortium is led by DESY and includes strong German, Swedish, UK, and Slovak contributions among many others.

The SPB/SFX instrument consists of two experiment endstations (upstream and downstream), based on the combined contributions of European XFEL and the SFX user consortium.The SPB/SFX instrument consists of an optics hutch (where the micron KB-focusing mirrors are located) and an experimental hutch equipped with two experimental endstations. Various beam conditioning devices (slits, shutters, attenuators, diagnostics, etc.) are installed in both hutches and some even immediately in front of the optics hutch.

A particular emphasis is placed on biological objects—including crystals of macromolecules and macromolecular complexes as well as viruses, organelles, and cells—though the instrument will also be capable of investigating non-biological samples using similar techniques. Furthermore, the SPB/SFX instrument aims to study structural dynamics in these biological systems on the millisecond to femtosecond timescale.