Equipment for investigations of biological nanostructures by diffraction methods using synchrotron radiation

Abstract

This paper reports on the experimental and methodical developments intended for the small-angle time-resolved station DICSI (“diffraction movie“) at the K1.3a beamline of the Siberia-2 storage ring at the Russian Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute.“ The principles of operation of the optical geometric and detecting systems, as well as the control and recording system, as applied to the investigation of the dynamics of biological nanostructures, have been considered in detail. A new version of the two-coordinate detecting system based on the designed highly effective fluorescent screen (Gd2O2S: Tb) and a CSDU-429 digital camera has been developed. The advantage of this recording system over the Image Plate detecting system in phenomenological investigations is that the optical images obtained on X-ray fluorescent screens with the use of cooled CCD/CMOS arrays can be directly entered into a computer. The detecting system has been tested on different samples by small- and wide-angle X-ray diffraction methods with the use of synchrotron radiation of the VEPP-3 storage ring at the Siberian Synchrotron Center (Novosibirsk, Russia) and the Siberia-2 storage ring at the Kurchatov Center for Synchrotron Radiation and Nanotechnology (Moscow, Russia). Different modifications of original two-coordinate recording systems have been used in systematic studies of the structural dynamics of biological tissues.