S Michael Soltis | PubMed Health

PubMed2003

Beamstop with integrated X-ray sensor.

A versatile beamstop with an integrated sensor has been developed at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) using non-specialized components. A diameter of 1.5 mm was achieved using a commercial subminiature surface mount PIN diode (Phillips BAP64) molded into a tungsten epoxy composite cup. The cup is supported on a thin fiberglass arm with printed circuit traces to transmit the signal from the diode. The assembly has an active area of approximately 100 micro m in diameter. As the diode is encapsulated in plastic, the response diminishes with decreasing energy but is still useful at 6 keV.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2002

Blu-Ice and the Distributed Control System: software for data acquisition and instrument control at macromolecular crystallography beamlines.

The Blu-Ice and Distributed Control System (DCS) software packages were developed to provide unified control over the disparate hardware resources available at a macromolecular crystallography beamline. Blu-Ice is a user interface that provides scientific experimenters and beamline support staff with intuitive graphical tools for collecting diffraction data and configuring beamlines for experiments. Blu-Ice communicates with the hardware at a beamline via DCS, an instrument-control and data-acquisition package designed to integrate hardware resources in a highly heterogeneous networked computing environment. Together, Blu-Ice and DCS provide a flexible platform for increasing the ease of use, the level of automation and the remote accessibility of beamlines. Blu-Ice and DCS are currently installed on four Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory crystallographic beamlines and are being implemented at sister light sources.

Crystallography, X-Ray↗