General layout of the SPB/SFX instrument at the European XFEL.
The SFX user consortium proposes to build a second interaction chamber for nanocrystallography and sample screening in the Single Particles, Clusters, and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SPB/SFX) instrument hutch, re-using the transmitted X-ray FEL beam. This proposal is led by DESY and includes strong Swedish, UK, and Slovak contributions. More details about this UC can be found on its website and information on the combined SPB/SFX beamline at the forthcoming European XFEL webpage.
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.
The upstream endstation will be able to utilize the full flux from SASE1, focused by one of the two Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) mirror systems to either a 1 µm or a 0.1 µm focus into the upstream focal plane. The spent beam of the upstream interaction region could then be utilized to be refocused by compound-refractive lenses (CRLs) to a second focal plane (downstream interaction region). Ultimately, utilizing the same photon beam parameters, two experiments may be run in parallel.
Starting in 2017, only the upstream interaction region will be installed and commissioned at the European XFEL. The downstream interaction region will follow approximately a year later.
