Photon-counting X-ray detector for Crystallography

描述（由申请人提供）：在过去的十年中，使用同步加速器x射线衍射技术来确定蛋白质晶体的原子结构已经成为科学和工业生物和制药应用的一项成熟技术。在过去的十年里，成千上万的复杂分子结构已经被推断出来，导致了药物开发的巨大增长，以及对酶和其他生物过程的理解的增加。阐明分子结构的x射线衍射技术与导出分子的化学和生物学功能的化学分析技术相结合。目前，研究人员和公司对同步加速器大分子晶体学设备提出了新的要求，他们建议在短时间内用高通量数据收集研究数百种蛋白质结构。对于大晶胞晶体的研究，需要比目前可用的面积更大的探测器。此外，为了研究与时间相关的现象，还需要更快的探测器。目前使用的电流积分信号处理技术将需要被单光子计数技术所取代，以实现更高的灵敏度、更大的动态范围和更快的数据收集时间。我们建议开发一种全新的用于大分子晶体学的探测器方法，通过创建一个由Hgl2薄膜直接沉积在CMOS成像阵列上的集成探测器。Hgl2薄膜将作为衍射x射线的直接转换介质。由吸收的x射线在Hgl2中产生的载流子在CMOS传感器上被感应为感应电荷，然后被放大和处理。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The use of synchrotron x-ray diffraction techniques to determine the atomic structures of protein crystals has become a well-established technique over the last decade for both scientific and industrial biological and pharmaceutical applications. Thousands of complex molecular structures have been deduced over the past decade, leading to a tremendous increase in pharmaceutical drug development, and an increase in the understanding of enzyme and other biological processes. The x-ray diffraction techniques to elucidate the molecular structures are used in combination with chemical analysis techniques that derive the chemical and biological function of the molecules. New demands are now being placed on the synchrotron macromolecular crystallography facilities by researchers and companies who propose to investigate hundreds of protein structures in a short time period with high-throughput data collection. For the study of large unit cell crystals, detectors with larger areas than are currently available are required. In addition, to study time-dependent phenomena, faster detectors are also required. The current-integrating signal-processing techniques now being used will need to be replaced with single photon-counting techniques, in order to achieve the higher sensitivities, larger dynamic range and faster data collection times that are being sought. We propose to develop an entirely new approach for detectors for macromolecular crystallography, by creating an integrated detector consisting of an Hgl2 thin film deposited directly onto CMOS imaging arrays. The Hgl2 film will act as a direct conversion medium for the diffracted x-rays. The charge carriers generated in the Hgl2 from the absorbed x-rays are sensed at the CMOS sensor as induced charge, then amplified and processed.