First industrial users on I19's upgraded end station

The small-molecule single-crystal diffraction beamline I19 at Diamond Light Source has been in operation since September 2008 and has recently undergone its first major upgrade. It now has a new high-throughput diffractometer in Experimental Hutch 1 (EH1), which will allow the determination of crystal structures from smaller, and more weakly diffracting, samples than was previously possible and with significantly faster data collection speeds.

Sarah Barnett, Senior Support Scientist I19

The new instrument has the familiar 3-circle fixed-χ geometry and it is equipped with a Pilatus 2M photon-counting detector. It also has a high-resolution on-axis sample viewing camera and high-precision sample stages, which will enable crystals to be centred extremely accurately in the X-ray beam. As the new instrument has a very much improved sphere-of-confusion, it is now possible to reduce the background signal significantly by allowing the beam to be collimated to match more closely the crystal size. The provision of a much larger area detector also allows data collections at a significantly longer sample-to-detector distance, which further reduces the recorded background while maintaining angular coverage.

The new diffractometer is controlled by the Diamond Generic Data Acquisition software (GDA), which allows its operation to be integrated with the other beamline hardware. This will permit more automated control of the robot and offer users the opportunity to routinely change the X-ray beam wavelength for the first time. It will also be possible to operate the beamline remotely.

Sarah Barnett, Senior Support Scientist I19 & Elizabeth Shotton, Head of Industrial Liaison at Diamond

On Monday 15th February 2016 Elizabeth Shotton from the Diamond Industrial Liaison Team and colleagues from pharmaceutical companies became the first Industrial Users of I19’s new end station. Looking at small molecules using longer than standard wavelength, the results gained will provide information regarding the absolute stereochemistry of the molecule they have created, gaining a clearer picture of the connectivity of the atoms. This key information is an essential part of in-house pharmaceutical development processes and a vital part of the regulatory process controlling drug development.

Dr Elizabeth Shotton, Head of Industrial Liaison at Diamond comments:

“The improvements made to the I19 end station with the resulting increase in throughput, will ultimately provide users with a significant increase the number of samples that can be screened per session. Coupled with the more rapid data collection capabilities, it is going to provide a more cost effective solution for our industrial clients. Crystallography is the gold standard for small molecule structure determination and these effective improvements come as a result of our experience with successfully increasing throughput on our MX beamlines.”

If you would like to learn more about working with the Diamond Industrial Liaison team or have an idea to discuss, we’d be delighted to hear from you. Please do contact us on 01235 778797 or at industry@diamond.ac.uk

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