SOLEIL is the French national synchrotron facility, located on the Saclay Plateau near Paris. It is a multi-disciplinary instrument and research laboratory whose mission is to conduct research using synchrotron radiation, to develop cutting edge instrumentation on the beamlines, and to make these developments available to the scientific community. SOLEIL synchrotron, a unique tool for both academic research and industrial applications across a wide range of disciplines including physics, biology, chemistry etc., opened in 2008. It is used annually by thousands researchers from France and abroad. SOLEIL is based on a synchrotron source that is state-of-the-art both in terms of brilliance and stability. This large scale facility, a partner of the Université Paris Saclay, is a “publically owned” private company, founded by the CNRS and the CEA.

PROXIMA 2A is a micro-focus beamline dedicated to macromolecular crystallography (MX), but is also used for chemical crystallography (CX). It delivers a very intense X-ray beam focused down to a few microns (10 µm * 5 µm, H*V FWHM). The X-rays are tunable over a wide energy range (6 – 18 keV), which covers the absorption edges of most heavy atoms for anomalous scattering studies. The end station is equipped with a high performance multi-axis goniometer, a robotic sample changer, a cryostat and an X-ray fluorescence detector. The area detector is an EIGER 9M, which is a fast (238 Hz in 9M mode or 750 Hz in 4M mode), state-of-the-art, photon counting, pixel array detector. PROXIMA 2A serves a large number of academic and industrial users in the international MX and CX community.

Mission

A post-doctoral fellowship is available to work on the development of synchrotron serial crystallography (SSX) methods as applied to Metal Organic Framework (MOF) and PolyOxoMetalate (POM) micro-crystals. The objectives are to prepare slurries of samples, then collect, process and analyse SSX data from fixed targets and micro-fluidic devices that can be produced on site in SOLEIL’s dedicated micro-fluidics lab. The SSX experiments will be conducted on the beamline PROXIMA 2A with the general aim to determine transient crystal structures.

Further information is available from William SHEPARD ([email protected])

Qualification & Experience

The candidate should hold a Ph.D. in Physics, Chemistry or Structural Biology. They should have a solid background in crystallography and chemistry/biochemistry, as well as, in programming, conducting CX/MX experiments and crystallographic analysis. Previous experience in serial crystallography and/or microfluidics would be an advantage. A willingness to work on the beamline is essential.