Electron diffraction infrastructure facility
Department of chemistry, University of Copenhagen establishes electron diffraction infrastructure facility.
Based on a grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, a new facility for single-crystal electron diffraction will open in the autumn of 2023.
The facility will host one of the first installations of a fully integrated, dedicated electron diffractometer, the Rigaku XtaLAB Synergy-ED in the world. This will be supplemented with facilities for handling biological and sensitive samples. The XtaLAB Synergy-ED instrument provides a unified process from sample preparation, over data collection, to structure determination at sub-Ångstrøm resolution of nano-scale crystals. Testing at the Rigaku demonstration site in Germany, has already solved year-long struggles with difficult structure elucidation of pharmaceutical excipients. The facility will allow structure elucidation of materials where single-crystals suitable for traditional X-ray diffraction methods cannot be obtained or for rare specimens such as minerals and biomolecules where sample size is at a premium.
"Only imagination limits the possible directions with this new instrumentation” says prof. Jesper Bendix, who is heading the consortium behind the creation of the facility. “We are already receiving much interest from potential users including the pharmaceutical industry and local researchers including the most recent Nobel Prize winner prof. Morten Meldal.”
Dr Mark Benson, General Manager, Global Sales and Marketing at Rigaku, said: “We are very happy that University of Copenhagen has decided to acquire our XtaLAB Synergy-ED for their Electron Crystallography Facility. Electron diffraction will revolutionize many areas of chemistry, including medicinal and biomolecular systems and complex mixtures of crystalline phases.”
The NNF Electron Crystallography Infrastructure Facility will have an experienced electron diffraction specialist associated and will be open for external usage across disciplines – from medical and biomolecular research over catalysis to geology. It will be open to academic as well as to industrial users.
For more information, please contact Professor Jesper Bendix at Bendix@chem.ku.dk or +45 35320101