NSF Award
9801247
*** 9801247 Squillante Macromolecular crystallography is a very important technique for determining structures of complex biological systems such as proteins, nucleic acids, and viruses. Due to such research on the atomic level, the understanding of important biological processes such as enzyme catalysis, viral infection, immune response, hereditary information encoding, and photosynthesis has increased considerably. Currently, detectors used in crystallography include films, CCDS, and storage phosphors. All of these detectors have serious drawbacks in terms of convenience, performance, size, stability or cost. Hence there is a real need for better imaging detectors in macromolecular research. In particular, large area detectors, with good sensitivity, high spatial resolution and low cost are needed to facilitate rapid progress in biological crystallography under typical laboratory conditions. To address this situation, we propose to develop a solid state, large area, high resolution imaging detector by combining semiconductor film (lead iodide) technology being developed at RMD with the large format amorphous silicon readout technology which has been developed by our collaborator, Dr. Street, at Xerox PARC. Dr. Westbrook at Argonne National Laboratory will also collaborate in the proposed effort and his group will be involved in developing low noise electronics for the detector as well as in conducting macromolecular diffraction studies. X-Ray Diffraction, Nondestructive Testing, Mammography, Radiology, X-Ray Astronomy, Environmental Studies. ***
