3D diffractive imaging of nanoparticle ensembles using an X-ray laser

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a significant advancement in 3D imaging of gold nanoparticles using X-ray free electron laser technology, enabling rapid data collection and improved resolution, paving the way for atomic-scale biomolecular imaging.

Contribution

The study introduces a high-throughput data collection method and a novel classification technique for heterogenous nanoparticle samples in X-ray single particle imaging.

Findings

Collected over 10 million diffraction patterns in less than 100 hours.

Achieved a resolution better than 3 nm.

Enabled new possibilities for near-atomic resolution biomolecular imaging.

Abstract

We report the 3D structure determination of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) by X-ray single particle imaging (SPI). Around 10 million diffraction patterns from gold nanoparticles were measured in less than 100 hours of beam time, more than 100 times the amount of data in any single prior SPI experiment, using the new capabilities of the European X-ray free electron laser which allow measurements of 1500 frames per second. A classification and structural sorting method was developed to disentangle the heterogeneity of the particles and to obtain a resolution of better than 3 nm. With these new experimental and analytical developments, we have entered a new era for the SPI method and the path towards close-to-atomic resolution imaging of biomolecules is apparent.