Today's macromolecular crystallographer is faced with an increasing number of interesting projects that are plagued by small crystal size. Thankfully, synchrotrons provide the necessary brilliance to study small and poorly diffracting crystals. However, synchrotrons are not as convenient as one's home lab and most researchers have more projects than can be accommodated by available beam time. The FR-D, Rigaku's new high brilliance rotating anode generator, provides enhanced performance for the home laboratory compared to standard rotating anodes. Presented below are the results of a test of usable flux.
Usable flux is defined as the spectral purity weighted intensity through a fixed aperture.
The FR-D was run at 3.5 kW with a 0.1 mm cathode. All measurements were made with a 0.5 mm x 1.0 mm collimator. The aperture in the usable flux experiment is meant to emulate crystals of various sizes. It is clear that the FR-D provides an astounding increase in usable flux for small samples.