Designing a synchrotron micro-focusing beamline for macromolecular crystallography

Abstract

After a successful 10 years of operation, the Canadian Macromolecular Crystallography Facility 08ID-1 beamline will undergo an upgrade to establish micro-beam capability. This paper is mostly focussed on optics and computer simulations for ray tracing of the beamline. After completion, the focussed beam at the sample will have a much smaller size of 50 × 5 μm2 (H x V), allowing measurement of X-ray diffraction patterns from much smaller crystals than possible presently. The beamline will be equipped with a fast sample chang-er and an ultra-low noise photon counting detector, allowing shutter-less operation of the beamline. Additionally, it will be possible to perform in-situ room-temperature experiments.