Bruker D8 VENTURE Diffractometer

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Project Summary/Abstract The Center for X-ray Crystallography at Boston College is seeking funds to purchase a Bruker D8 VENTURE Diffractometer coupled with duo ImuS radiation sources (Mo and Cu) and a PHOTON III detector for small molecule structural characterization. Currently the only single-crystal X-ray diffractometer at Boston College is an 12-year old Bruker APEX II DUO diffractometer purchased in 2009. This essential workhorse instrument has become unreliable with age and heavy usage. Due to discontinuation of production of this model instrument and a lack of replacement parts, Bruker will end service support for our current instrument starting June 1, 2021. The Bruker D8 VENTURE allows users to collect high-quality charge density data with Mo radiation and to exploit all the advantages of the Cu wavelength for absolute structure determinations and diffraction experiments on small organic crystals. This new instrument will provide indispensable analytical support for a very broad range of research programs from eight faculty members, among them, seven are NIH-supported. Research activities are concentrated primarily in the areas of synthetic organic chemistry, and biochemistry/chemical biology, targeted to develop methods for the synthesis of bioactive natural products, small molecule drug candidates, and macromolecular biomolecules. Such projects depend highly on the acquisition of structural information of intermediate and end products. X-ray crystallography is an indispensable tool for this work, and in many cases, the only reliable method to obtain structural information. The combination of ultra brightness of the ImuS sources, with the quantum-limited sensitivity of the PHOTON III detector, will not only greatly improve our capability on small and weakly-diffracted samples, but also fulfil the steadily rising needs for absolute configuration determinations on molecules that only contain light atoms. Users are more likely to get crystal structures from samples that were previously found to be unsuitable or too small. Time consuming experiments such as variable temperature measurements will become more practical and data collection on metastable crystals will be amenable, thanks to faster acquisition time.