Dedicated High-throughput Electron Diffractometer

This is a ARC LIEF application for a high-throughput single-crystal electron diffractometer (led out of USyd). This is a very new technology, building on the last 20 years’ worth of advances in quantitative “micro-electron diffraction” (microED) crystallography instrumentation and analysis. It is the next revolution in structural science. ED uses the same principles of Bragg diffraction as X-ray crystallography, but the probability of an electron wave being diffracted is orders of magnitude higher. This has the advantage that ED patterns can be measured from crystals that are far too small for X-rays, even when using the most intense synchrotron X-ray sources. Unfortunately, traditional ED cannot give truly quantitative data, making it difficult or impossible to use to reliably solve crystal structures. The new field of microED exploits the latest advances in detector technology and image processing to overcome this by collecting and isolating data from multiple tiny crystallites while rotating them through a single electron beam. Data can be collected on a timescale of minutes from samples with minimal preparation. MicroED has the potential to enhance the research programs all experimentalists interested in the atomic structure of materials or molecules, by significantly expanding the range of samples that can be studied. This includes the majority of chemists and a large proportion of life scientists (notably those concerned with structural biology), as well as some physicists (condensed matter), engineers (materials) and geoscientists (mineralogy). All together 9 universities from 4 states with 16 CIs in Australia are involved in this LIEF with Dr. Fei Liu ( Natural Sciences) as the main contact CI at Macquarie Uni.