Small-angle X-ray scattering in the era of fourth-generation light sources

Abstract

Recently, fourth-generation synchrotron sources with several orders of magnitude higher brightness and higher degree of coherence compared with third-generation sources have come into operation. These new X-ray sources offer exciting opportunities for the investigation of soft matter and biological specimens by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and related scattering methods. The improved beam properties together with the advanced pixel array detectors readily enhance the angular resolution of SAXS and ultra-small-angle X-ray scattering in the pinhole collimation. The high degree of coherence is a major boost for the X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) technique, enabling the equilibrium dynamics to be probed over broader time and length scales. This article presents some representative examples illustrating the performance of SAXS and XPCS with the Extremely Brilliant Source at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The rapid onset of radiation damage is a significant challenge with the vast majority of samples, and appropriate protocols need to be adopted for circumventing this problem.

Improvement of ultra-small-angle XPCS with the Extremely Brilliant Source

“…Several examples of out-of-equilibrium dynamics probed by the XPCS technique at the TRUSAXS instrument have been reported (Zinn et al, 2022;Narayanan et al, 2023). The previous section presented additional cases demonstrating the enhanced performance.…”

“…The higher degree of coherence of the EBS together with fast pixel detectors have significantly improved the technical performance of the XPCS method (Chushkin et al, 2022;Narayanan et al, 2023). The UA-XPCS technique on the TRUSAXS instrument shows these benefits in terms of an enhanced speckle contrast and an order of magnitude higher coherent flux.…”

“…This section presents two representative applications of XPCS using the TRUSAXS instrument. Several recent examples are presented elsewhere (Zinn et al, 2022(Zinn et al, , 2023Pal et al, 2022;Narayanan et al, 2023).…”

A correction procedure for secondary scattering contributions from windows in small-angle X-ray scattering and ultra-small-angle X-ray scattering

“…5. Normalized and background subtracted USAXS profiles from an aqueous suspension (7 wt%) of multilamellar microtubes formed by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and β-cyclodextrin (CD) in 1:2 molar ratio at room temperature (Narayanan et al, 2023). It is evident that profiles measured with the small (1 mm) and large (12 cm) beamstops perfectly superimpose at the higher q region signifying that the secondary scattering correction is unimportant in this case.…”

Estudo da encapsulação de fármacos antineoplásicos em sistemas nanoestruturados: Caracterização estrutural e efeito sinérgico de fármacos

“…1.7.6. Espalhamento de raios-X a baixos ângulos (SAXS) O espalhamento de raios-X a baixos ângulos (SAXS) é uma técnica utilizada para realizar caracterizações estruturais (NARAYANAN et al, 2023) de amostras variando entre 1 e 1000 nm, não sendo necessária a fixação do material através de técnicas de cristalização, vitrificação ou mesmo fixação química, sendo uma coleta de informações no ambiente nativo do material a ser analisado (TREWHELLA, 2022).…”