European XFEL camera to image molecules at 4.5 million frames per second
Swindon, England--An X-ray camera being built by the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC), a United Kingdom publicly funded research council, in collaboration with the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, Scotland) will help the billion-euro European XFEL (X-ray Free-Electron Laser) contribute to drug discovery and other research once the facility becomes operational in 2015. Designed to image molecules at the unprecedented speed of 4.5 million frames per second, the camera has been approved following a visit to STFC by a delegation from the European XFEL's Detector Advisory Committee and will be constructed thanks to a nearly $4.9 million dollar (£3 million) prototype collaboration.
Now under construction near Hamburg, Germany, the European XFEL is a 2-mile-long facility that will use superconducting accelerator technology to accelerate electrons that generate X-ray flashes a billion times brighter than those produced by conventional X-ray sources. The advanced microelectronics capabilities and the ability to design other state-of-the-art imagers such as those for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, for example, clinched the decision to entrust construction of this high-speed imaging X-ray camera to the STFC.
Even though current X-ray cameras capture images when matter is bombarded by a constant beam of X-rays, the extreme brevity and intensity of the flashes produced by the European XFEL means that such cameras would not be suitable for use at the new facility. The STFC camera, however, will work in conjunction with hyper-short, hyper-brilliant X-ray flashes, enabling three-dimensional X-ray imaging that could map the atomic details of viruses, for instance, or pinpoint the molecular composition of individual cells and molecules.
Tim Nicholls of STFC says, "We’re delighted that the European XFEL has turned to STFC to build this pioneering camera. It demonstrates how the UK can provide the high-tech excellence that world markets need, leading to scientific advances that make a real difference to people’s lives."
SOURCE: Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC); www.stfc.ac.uk/About+STFC/36221.aspx
Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)
Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.