Nanometer-sized Beams for Soft Condensed Matter Studies
Christian Riekel
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
Current beam sizes used routinely for soft condensed matter studies at the ESRF microfocus beamline (ID13) have reached the 300 nm scale and demonstration experiments have been performed for 100 nm beams. I will show the types of SAXS/WAXS experiments possible with such beam sizes for selected examples such as polymer and biopolymer fibers. In contrast to protein crystallography, most experiments are performed at room temperature and radiation damage is the overriding issue. The talk will include a discussion on current strategies on sample manipulation, advanced sample environments and in particular data reduction strategies. A more brilliant synchrotron radiation source -such as the ERL-project- would allow reducing the beam divergence for submicron spots and provide new opportunities for combined SAXS/WAXS experiments. Reducing the exposure time in scanning experiments would allow also reducing the propagation of radiation damage in complex biological materials.
