MX2: a high-flux undulator microfocus beamline serving both the chemical and macromolecular crystallography communities at the Australian Synchrotron

TLDR

MX2 is an in‑vacuum undulator‑based crystallography beamline at the 3 GeV Australian Synchrotron. This paper describes the beamline status, plans for its future and recent scientific highlights. The beamline endstation enables robotic handling of cryogenic samples via an updated SSRL SAM robot. The beamline delivers hard X‑rays (4.8–21 keV) to a 22 × 12 µm spot with a 13 keV flux of 3.4 × 10¹² photons s⁻¹, making it ideal for weakly diffracting proteins, viruses, assemblies, nucleic acids, inorganic catalysts, and organic drugs, and has been fully operational for nine years.

Abstract

MX2 is an in-vacuum undulator-based crystallography beamline at the 3 GeV Australian Synchrotron. The beamline delivers hard X-rays in the energy range 4.8-21 keV to a focal spot of 22 × 12 µm FWHM (H × V). At 13 keV the flux at the sample is 3.4 × 1012 photons s-1. The beamline endstation allows robotic handling of cryogenic samples via an updated SSRL SAM robot. This beamline is ideal for weakly diffracting hard-to-crystallize proteins, virus particles, protein assemblies and nucleic acids as well as smaller molecules such as inorganic catalysts and organic drug molecules. The beamline is now mature and has enjoyed a full user program for the last nine years. This paper describes the beamline status, plans for its future and some recent scientific highlights.