X-ray Sources and Detectors

Abstract

In Chapter 1 you learned how crystals of a protein can be grown and you observed a diffraction pattern. The crystalline form of a protein is required to determine the protein’s structure by X-ray diffraction, but equally necessary are the tools for recording the diffraction pattern. These will be described in this chapter on hardware. The various X-ray sources and their special properties are discussed, followed by a description of cameras and detectors for quantitative and qualitative X-ray data collection.