Experimental station

MicroMAX combines three important aspects of structure determination: structures from macromolecules that can only be crystallised in the form of microcrystals, room temperature structures, and time resolved structures down to the micro- or millisecond timescale.

MicroMAX is a dedicated macromolecular crystallography beamline that will deliver exceptional micro-focus, achieving a focal spot as small as 1 μm², which is two orders of magnitude lower than that delivered by BioMAX (planned for 2025 with focusing mirrors, the initial X-ray lens focusing is down to 10 x 5 μm²). In monochromatic mode, the X-ray flux will be very high, delivering > 10¹³ X-ray photons per second at the sample position. When using multilayer optics, MicroMAX will provide a polychromatic X-ray beam (ΔE/E ~ 0.4% or 1 %) delivering 10¹⁴ – 10¹⁵ X-ray photons per second.

By combining the unique beam properties with a flexible design of the experimental station, the MicroMAX beamline will, when in full operation, be second to none for demanding protein structure solutions. MicroMAX will from the start offer several sample delivery methods including traditional rotational data collection and new serial crystallography schemes. MicroMAX will be ready to easily accept new developments in technology for sample delivery and manipulation.

MicroMAX will also create a bridge between synchrotron and XFEL radiation sources.

The experiment setup will have a beam conditioning unit (with a microsecond chopper), a sample table (supporting the MD3-UP diffractometer), an ISARA sample changer and a detector stage housing two detectors that can be easily exchanged.

The diffractometer can be used for rotational crystallography but also for fixed-target serial crystallography. It will also be possible to use different injector based sample delivery systems.

The sample changer can store up to 464 SPINE sample holders and automatically exchange these under cryo-conditions.

The detector stage will have two area detectors, an Eiger2 X CdTe 9M photon-counting detector and a Jungfrau integrating detector.