The potential benefits of using higher X-ray energies for macromolecular crystallography

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Using X-ray energies higher than those normally used for macromolecular X-ray crystallography (MX) at synchrotron sources can theoretically increase the achievable signal as a function of dose and reduce the rate of radiation damage [1].In practice, a major stumbling block to the use of higher X-ray energy has been the reduced quantum efficiency of silicon detectors as the X-ray energy increases, but hybrid photon counting CdTe detectors are optimised for higher X-ray energies, and their performance has been steadily improving.The potential advantages of using higher incident beam energy together with a CdTe detector for MX are explored, with a particular focus on the advantages that higher beam energies may have for MX experiments with microbeams or microcrystals.Our Monte Carlo calculations [2] show a greater than a factor of 2 improvement in diffraction efficiency when using microbeams and microcrystals of 5 μm or less.These take into account the escape of photoelectrons from the crystal as well as entry from the surrounding material [3], both of which have now been incorporated into RADDOSE-3D.