Acoustic droplet ejection: from crystallization through time-resolved SFX

Allen M. Orville

XFEL Hub at Diamond, Diamond Light Source, Diamond House, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0DE, United Kingdom

 

On demand acoustic droplet ejection is a general, touchless method that use focused sound waves to eject picoliter to nanoliter volumes from one place to another. A spot-focused piezoelectric transducer is driven by a waveform pulse with frequency and amplitude that ultimately impact droplet size and velocity, respectively. A wide variety of solutions can be manipulated, from crystallization reagents and chemical libraries to relatively viscous slurries of microcrystals. Droplets can be ejected from any well within a range of microplates, or launched from a custom, 3D printed and refillable micro-well. The droplet destination can be any well within a microplate, a known location such as a mounted crystal or any spot within MiTeGen micromesh, an optically and X-ray transparent transport belt, or directly into the XFEL interaction zone. Several examples of applications will be described, including on-demand acoustic injectors for SFX and spectroscopic data collection at the LCLS.