Kiwi crystallographers benefit from X-ray diffractometer

Scientific equipment supplier AXT has announced the sale of an XtaLAB Synergy-S single-crystal X-ray diffractometer to the University of Auckland, where it will serve a large research community. The product is the first diffractometer to be released following the merger of Rigaku and Agilent, who formed Rigaku Oxford Diffraction, as well as the first Synergy system to be installed in the Oceania region.

Single-crystal small molecule diffractometers are fundamental tools for chemistry researchers, enabling them to understand the structure of molecules and providing them with valuable information about how they behave. The University of Auckland recently decommissioned an old system that had come to the end of its life and will be replacing it with this state-of-the-art system.

The Synergy-S is a fast and agile system that will provide performance far beyond the capabilities of the old system, according to AXT. It incorporates the latest technology, including a PhotonJet-S microfocus X-ray source, a redesigned Kappa goniometer, a photon-counting detector and highly parallelised optics. All this hardware is exploited by the researchers using a user-inspired software interface optimised for throughput and accuracy as well as structural resolution.

“The Synergy-S offered us the levels of performance that we required,” said Associate Professor Tilo Söhnel from the University of Auckland. “We were after a system that could measure samples quickly and the Synergy-S has reduced measurement times literally from days to minutes and hours. It is also able to resolve structures of small, weakly diffracting crystals that we simply could not measure before, as well as heavily diffracting and absorbing materials. It also offers new levels of versatility and will allow us to venture into biological chemistry looking at proteins.”

The versatility of the system is enhanced through the use of two X-ray sources, copper and silver. Associate Professor Söhnel noted, “Copper will be our high-intensity workhorse, while we will defer to silver for the analysis of highly absorbing and highly diffracting samples.”

In the process of evaluating the Synergy-S for their requirements, some samples were measured by the applications team at Rigaku Oxford Diffraction. The data generated on fused-ring metallabenzene structures was of such good quality that it was published in chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie. According to Dr Söhnel, “This is no doubt the first of many publications that will be produced using data generated by the Synergy-S.”

This Synergy-S will be used by academics, postgraduate students and external researchers from countries as far afield as Malaysia and Iran, who do not have this type of facility. These researchers are involved in topics as diverse as metal-organic materials, macromolecules, catalysts, organic and inorganic chemistry, bio-inorganic chemistry, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery.