D8 Venture

The D8 Venture provides exceptional in-house X-ray diffraction capabilities to researchers at Vanderbilt University. The system is equipped with an extreme brightness Excillum D2+ MetalJet X-ray source employing a liquid gallium alloy jet anode capable of accepting significantly higher power loads than conventional solid metal targets. The liquid gallium anode allows for extremely small electron spot sizes provided using a LaB6 cathode and an electronically controlled focusing coil. A HELIOS MX optic focuses the X-ray beam with multiple options to control beam divergence according to crystal size and unit cell parameters. Crystals mounted on the kappa-axis goniometer can be presented to the beam in any orientation to provide complete coverage of the reciprocal lattice. A PHOTON II charge-integrating pixel array detector allows for low noise, shutterless data collection. The facility is available for both macromolecular and small-molecule structure determination. The D8 Venture is supported by an award from the Vanderbilt University Trans-Institutional Programs.