LCP injectors offer advantages over liquid injectors in areas including sample consumption and native crystallization environment for membrane proteins. These viscous jets are now regularly used by several groups within and outside of BioXFEL for serial femtosecond crystallography at XFELs.

Additionally, due to the viscous nature of the medium, crystal tumbling times are slow enough that synchrotrons (with much longer pulse lengths than XFELs) are able to capture snapshots of micro-sized crystals, opening up a new field of synchrotron-based serial crystallography. Several groups within and outside of BioXFEL have now participated in pioneering serial crystallography experiments using these viscous jets at synchrotrons. The use of synchrotrons for serial crystallography vastly increases the potential applications and availability of serial crystallography experiments than XFELs can provide, and relieving some of the burden on oversubscribed XFEL beam time.

Uwe Weierstall has led the effort to distribute these injectors to other organizations. 14 Injectors have been sold. 

Organizations Involved

ShangaiTech University, China

Zhi-Jie James Liu

Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, China

Yuhui Dong

ARC Australia

Peter Berends

BioCARS, University of Chicago

Robert Henning

Cornell University

Sol Grunner

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Richard Neutze

University of Southern California

Vadim Cherezov

Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland (injector and additional parts)

Joerg Standfuss

DESY, Germany

Henry Chapman

Diamond UK

Isabel Morales

LCLS (3 injectors)

 

Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, China

Sun Bo