Rigaku Announces new Ultra-Bright Microfocus X-Ray Source for Structural Biology

Rigaku Americas Corporation has announced the introduction of the Rigaku FR-E+ SuperBright™, an ultra-bright microfocus rotating anode X-ray source for structural biology.

According to Rigaku, with brightness exceeding some second-generation synchrotron beamlines, the FR-E+ SuperBright is the most intense home laboratory X-ray source available today for macromolecular crystallography.

The instrument will be featured at the upcoming Annual Spring Meeting of the British Crystallographic Association (April 17-19, 2007) in Canterbury, England.

An evolution of the proven industry standard FR-E SuperBright X-ray source, the synchrotron-class FR-E+ SuperBright produces intensities of 1.6x1011 X-rays/mm2/sec, twice the flux of the closest competitive instrument.

This dramatic increase in performance is beneficial for all aspects of in-house crystallographic research, from exceptional data quality for very small and poor quality crystals to an overall enhancement of research productivity.

With the FR-E+ SuperBright, most challenging projects can be performed in the home laboratory: screen crystals where no diffraction was seen on a standard system, collect full data sets on samples where only low resolution reflections would normally be observed, and solve previously intractable structures.

In addition to having the brightest X-ray beam, the FR-E+ SuperBright features a true 70 µm x 70 µm focal spot, the smallest available in a rotating anode design. This allows the FR-E+ SuperBright to deliver a small and intense beam that is ideally suited to the tiny crystals typically encountered in current structural biology research.

For high-throughput phasing applications, the system is uniquely available in several dual wavelength configurations, including a Cu/Cr configuration known as the FR-E+ DW SuperBright.