High‐speed raster‐scanning synchrotron serial microcrystallography with a high‐precision piezo‐scanner

The Frontier Microfocus Macromolecular Crystallography (FMX) beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II with its 1 µm beam size and photon flux of 3 × 1012 photons s−1 at a photon energy of 12.66 keV has reached unprecedented dose rates for a structural biology beamline. The high dose rate presents a great advantage for serial microcrystallography in cutting measurement time from hours to minutes. To provide the instrumentation basis for such measurements at the full flux of the FMX beamline, a high‐speed, high‐precision goniometer based on a unique XYZ piezo positioner has been designed and constructed. The piezo‐based goniometer is able to achieve sub‐100 nm raster‐scanning precision at over 10 grid‐linepairs s−1 frequency for fly scans of a 200 µm‐wide raster. The performance of the scanner in both laboratory and serial crystallography measurements up to the maximum frame rate of 750 Hz of the Eiger 16M's 4M region‐of‐interest mode has been verified in this work. This unprecedented experimental speed significantly reduces serial‐crystallography data collection time at synchrotrons, allowing utilization of the full brightness of the emerging synchrotron radiation facilities. The design and first measurements with a high‐speed piezo‐positioner‐based goniometer for raster‐scanning serial macromolecular micro‐focus crystallography at synchrotron storage rings are presented.