Services

What service to choose

For detailed information about the types of analysis available at the CCSA, please click on the correspoding tile above. If unsure, this is a short summary for each type:

• Single crystal X-ray diffraction (SXRD) is the standard method for 3D structure determination. As the name suggests, it requires single crystals. We can generally determine structures from crystals if they are larger than about 5um, which is also about the minimum size visible with a good light microscope. SXRD includes absolute structure determination. This requires greater data quality than structure determination when chirality is irrelevant. This is why the Service request form as a special field for chirality.
• Powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD). As the name suggests, PXRD is performed from powder. It has quite different applications from SXRD, and can provide information about the fraction between crystalline and amorphous material, surface structure, etc.
• Single crystal electron diffraction (ED) has results very similar to SXRD, including absolute structure determination. They major difference: ED is performed on minute crystals. The thickness should be less than 1um, and samples are typically shreddered before the experiment. In addition to 3D structure information, ED can be used to determined partial charges of the atoms inside the structure.

Single crystal diffraction can be performed on a great scale of sizes for the chemical compounds, starting from simple salts via (metallo-)organic compounds all the way to biological macromolecules and complexes.