X-ray Crystallography Laboratory
The X-ray Crystallography Laboratory (XCL) provides single-crystal X-ray crystallographic services to the Department. The facility has three single crystal diffractometers:
- Bruker D8 Venture / Photon III area detector system equipped with dual microfocus radiation sources (Cu and Mo)
- Bruker D8 Duo diffractometer / SMART APEX II CCD area detector system equipped with two radiation sources (Cu microsource and and Mo sealed-tube)
- Bruker PLATFORM diffractometer equipped with a SMART APEX II CCD area detector and a sealed-tube (Mo) source
Crystal samples are usually cooled under a cold nitrogen stream during data collection in order to enhance data quality and to protect sensitive samples from decomposition.
Structures are normally fully solved and refined by the staff crystallographer, with full structure reports (tables of experimental parameters, atomic coordinates, interatomic distances and angles, and structural diagrams) being supplied to the researcher(s).
The crystallographer is available for consultation when structural material is to be published, and will gladly assist in the preparation of publication-ready material (tables, descriptions, diagrams, Crystallographic Information Files [CIF's]) as required by the journal of interest.
Some research groups with their own crystallographic computing resources use data collected by the facility to solve and refine their own structures. The facility also offers departmental clients access to the Cambridge Structural Database of well over 1,000,000 organic and organometallic structures.