SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
EU-funded researchers have developed a new ultrafast X-ray technique which could revolutionise our understanding of structure and function at the atomic and molecular level.
...
The AXSIS team, led by Franz Kaertner, Professor of Physics at the University of Hamburg, has developed attosecond serial crystallography and spectroscopy which can give a full description of ultrafast processes atomically resolved in real space and on the electronic energy landscape. They believe this new technique will turn our understanding of structure and function at the atomic and molecular level on its head and help unravel fundamental processes in chemistry and biology.The technique involves applying a fully coherent attosecond X-ray source based on coherent inverse Compton scattering off a free-electron crystal, developed by the project, to outrun radiation damage effects caused by the high X-ray irradiance needed to capture diffraction signals.
The team is also using this advance to optimise the entire instrumentation towards fundamental measurements of light absorption and excitation energy transfer. This includes X-ray pulse parameters, in tandem with sample delivery and crystal size as well as advanced X-ray detectors.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 15 2016, @07:40PM
The fastest X-ray ever.
Too lazy to read: are these attosecond pulses repeated (quickly)? Do we get a movie of quantum mechanics in action, or just a snapshot?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:45PM
"Serial crystallography" actually means that they are dropping a stream of tiny crystals through the path of the (pulsed) beam - there is so much energy in the pulse that each crystal is instantly damaged or destroyed. So instead of following whatever fast process in a single sample like you would in conventional crystallography you start it in all crystals at the same time and record each state as they enter the beam each a fraction of a second later than the preceding one. The obvious problem is random orientation and varying quality, but I gathered from several recent talks that it has largely been overcome.