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Chemical Crystallography - In person collection

Chemical Crystallography - In person collection

Workflow

Relevant User Interfaces

Step 0: Experimental setup

For chemical crystallography collections, there are a few things you should check before starting to collect:

  • Cryojet should be out and in Pause. Otherwise this will cast a shadow on the detector. Open the Cryo tab of the MX1 or MX2 Controls GUI to check this

  • Cryojet is at 100 K. Check this also on Cryo tab of the MX1 or MX2 Controls GUI.

  • Energy is set to 17.44 keV. This will give you maximum resolution. Check this on MX1 Controls or MX2 Controls

  • CX is selected in CAP user changer.

  • Detector distance is set to the minimum for Screening and Collection, to give you the maximum resolution for the given energy.

    • 105 mm for MX1

    • 110 mm for MX2

Step 1: Mount a crystal

  1. Close the shutter (Beam Off button on Dataset window ) and then unlock the door. Ensure the detector has moved all the way back from the goniometer. Do not reach around it to mount your sample.

  2. Place your pin carefully on the goniometer. If you bump it the goniometer it will lose its position and will have to be rehomed, which is a slow task and will take up your beamtime.

  3. Do a search and secure to lock up the hutch.

See Hand mounting for more details.

Step 2: Rastering

If you can’t find your crystal on the loop, use Rastering to find it by diffraction. Skip this step if you can see your crystal. Rastering is not really necessary on MX1 since the beam is very large.

 

Step 3: Screening

Collect a small wedge of data to see if the crystals are worth collecting, instructions: Screening

Step 4: Strategy

Use the results from screening to calculate the optimum Strategy for your collection.

Step 5: Collect dataset

Collect your perfect and beautiful Collecting a Dataset

Step 6: View processing results and solution

Check your results and decide if you want to collect again for higher quality data or to achieve more data. Data Processing

This can be done via the data processing webpage, but to find more information, you will want to view the initial solution, which is in the CXASAP-Brute folder in the folder for your dataset. See CX - accessing and analysing data on the beamlinefor how to find your data and CXASAP on MX for information on how to find your CXASAP results.

Later steps

Prepare your structure for publication

  • Import the relevant synchrotron information into your cif, from the autoprocess.cif file generated for each dataset: CIF file entries

  • Reference the synchrotron and relevant software: Publishing MX data