Time-resolved Crystallography ‘T-REXX’

A second endstation dedicated to pump-probe time-resolved macromolecular crystallography, T-REXX (Time-resolved experiments with crystallography), is in operation on the EMBL beamline P14 on PETRA III since late 2018. The development and the construction of the endstation was realized in a collaborative project between Hamburg University (Arwen Pearson) and EMBL Hamburg (Thomas R. Schneider) funded by a collaborative ‘Verbundforschung’ grant from the German Ministry for Research and Education, BMBF.

The endstation features a fixed energy (12.7 keV) beam with a flux of ~2 x 10¹² ph/s through a 15 x 10 µm² cross section. While the endstation is not equipped with a standard diffractometer, it offers various means for beam conditioning, and pre-installed lasers and laser-optics.  The sample space is open and accessible so that different sample presentation and/or pump-probe technologies can be installed.

As the T-REXX endstation is physically separated from the first endstation of P14, elaborate and time-consuming setup works for pump-probe time-resolved experiments can be performed without impeding the standard user operation on beamline P14. Only once the instrumentation for a time-resolved experiment is in place, the beam is then guided to the T-REXX endstation.

External links

• A contribution ‘P14.EH2: Getting ready to turn the light on’ was published in the IUCr Crystallites blog.
• A newspiece ‘Taking crystallography to the fourth dimension’ appeared in EMBLetc.
• A press release was published by Hamburg University.