Optimizing aerodynamic lenses for single-particle imaging

Roth, Nils; Awel, Salah; Horke, Daniel A.; Küpper, Jochen

doi:10.1016/j.jaerosci.2018.06.010

Cited by 24 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Further development in lens stack design 20 and aerosolisation geometry is expected to increase the particle transmission and decrease fluorescence and scattering background from injection gas that dominated the noise in our diffraction data. We anticipate that such diffraction data from single proteins will be possible to analyse using established 3D reconstruction methods 21,10 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrospray sample injection for single-particle imaging with X-ray lasers

Bielecki

Hantke

Daurer

et al. 2018

Preprint

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The possibility of imaging single proteins constitutes an exciting challenge for X-ray lasers. Despite encouraging results on large particles, imaging small particles has proven to be difficult for two reasons: not quite high enough pulse intensity from currently available X-ray lasers and, as we demonstrate here, contamination of the aerosolised molecules by non-volatile contaminants in the solution. The amount of contamination on the sample depends on the initial droplet-size during aerosolisation. Here we show that with our electrospray injector we can decrease the size of aerosol droplets and demonstrate virtually contaminant-free sample delivery of organelles, small virions, and proteins. The results presented here, together with the increased performance of next generation X-ray lasers, constitute an important stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of protein structure determination from imaging at room temperature and high temporal resolution.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrospray sample injection for single-particle imaging with X-ray lasers

Bielecki

Hantke

Daurer

et al. 2018

Preprint

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“…3, that at a very low helium flow of 25 ml n /min not much focusing occurred and the particle beam was collimated, in contrast to the typical convergence-divergence behaviour at higher helium flows. The latter behaviour resembles aerodynamic lens systems [31,37]. At sufficiently high flow rates, the thermalised particles in the buffer-gas cell followed the flow-field and, when travelling through the small orifice, sped up.…”

mentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Here, the room-temperature nanoparticles underwent rapid collisional thermalisation with the 4 K cold helium gas at typical densities of ∼10 16 cm −3 . The cooled nanoparticles were extracted through an exit aperture of 2 mm diameter into high vacuum, p < 10 −6 mbar, forming a collimated/focused particle beam [31], while the density of the helium gas dropped quickly [32]. Par-ticles were detected 10 mm after the exit of the cell by particle-localisation microscopy based on optical light scattering [30].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At high helium flows this led to a noticeable asymmetry in the produced particle distribution, which was well-reproduced by the 3D simulations, vide infra. Initial phase-space distributions of particles at the entrance of the buffer-gas cell were taken from equivalent simulations of the transport system [31]. Nanoparticle temperatures were evaluated by two independent approaches.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Controlled beams of shock-frozen, isolated, biological and artificial nanoparticles

Samanta

Amin

Estillore

et al. 2020

Structural Dynamics

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X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) promise the diffractive imaging of single molecules and nanoparticles with atomic spatial resolution. This relies on the averaging of millions of diffraction patterns off identical particles, which should ideally be isolated in the gas phase and shockfrozen in their native structure. Here, we demonstrated that polystyrene nanospheres and Cydia pomonella granulovirus can be transferred into the gas phase, isolated, and very quickly shockfrozen, i. e., cooled to 4 K within microseconds in a helium-buffer-gas cell, much faster than state-of-the-art approaches. Nanoparticle beams emerging from the cell were characterised using particle-localisation microscopy with light-sheet illumination, which allowed for the full reconstruction of the particle beams, focused to < 100 µm, as well as for the determination of particle flux and number density. The experimental results were quantitatively reproduced and rationalised through particle-trajectory simulations. We propose an optimised setup with cooling rates for few-nanometers particles on nanoseconds timescales. The produced beams of shockfrozen isolated nanoparticles provide a breakthrough in sample delivery, e. g., for diffractive imaging and microscopy or low-temperature nanoscience.

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“…Experimentally, this higher intensity is typically achieved by focusing the x-ray beam to a smaller spot, in the most extreme cases to sizes of only ∼100 nm. This places stringent demands on the employed sample delivery methods, typically aerodynamic lens stacks (ALS) [5][6][7], and requires their characterization and optimization prior to XFEL experiments with laboratory-based methods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light-sheet imaging for the recording of transverse absolute density distributions of gas-phase particle-beams from nanoparticle injectors

Worbs¹,

Lübke²,

Roth³

et al. 2019

Opt. Express

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Imaging biological molecules in the gas-phase requires novel sample delivery methods, which generally have to be characterized and optimized to produce high-density particle beams. A non-destructive characterization method of the transverse particle beam profile is presented. It enables the characterization of the particle beam in parallel to the collection of, for instance, x-ray-diffraction patterns. As a rather simple experimental method, it requires the generation of a small laser-light sheet using a cylindrical telescope and a microscope. The working principle of this technique was demonstrated for the characterization of the fluid-dynamic-focusing behavior of 220 nm polystyrene beads as prototypical nanoparticles. The particle flux was determined and the velocity distribution was calibrated using Mie-scattering calculations.

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Optimizing aerodynamic lenses for single-particle imaging

Cited by 24 publications

References 36 publications

Electrospray sample injection for single-particle imaging with X-ray lasers

Electrospray sample injection for single-particle imaging with X-ray lasers

Controlled beams of shock-frozen, isolated, biological and artificial nanoparticles

Light-sheet imaging for the recording of transverse absolute density distributions of gas-phase particle-beams from nanoparticle injectors

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