96-Well Plates (extra information)
Plate Dimensions
Please use standard well plates with the following dimensions to accommodate the mounting in our sample holder at the beamline:
85.5 mm x 127.8 mm
With a 5 mm lip around the bottom. *** This lip size is important for the plates to fit properly in our holders.
Well plates for large volumes (e.g. 100 uL) should be flat-bottomed. For low volumes (e.g. 1 uL) crystallization plates might be suitable. Use low-scattering polymers (e.g. polycarbonate).
Sample Preparation
Prefill your samples so each well is about half filled with sample volume. Minimum volume depends entirely on the capacity of your well plate.
Seal your well plates with samples (preferably use heat or pressure sealing, which is more reliable than tape seals).
Test the seal of your well plates before sending the samples to the beamline. The well plates will be mounted vertically at our sample setup, and a good seal is required to avoid leakage. We have seen significant problems with sealing systems at elevated temperatures (even 37 ºC), and we recommend you test this in advance.
Scattering Background
The background scattering from the multi-well plate and from Kapton, used on the temperature-controlled mount, must be considered when planning to use multi-well plates. An example of this data is given below which shows the broad peak observed for Kapton and the increased scattering from the multi-well plate at lower q. Scattering from samples must be significantly stronger than the background to achieve a useful signal.
