Laser-Induced Alignment of Nanoparticles and Macromolecules for Coherent-Diffractive-Imaging Applications
Laser-induced alignment of particles and molecules was long envisioned to support three-dimensional structure determination using "single-molecule diffraction" with X-ray free-electron lasers [PRL 92, 198102 (2004)]. However, the alignment of isolated macromolecules has not yet been demonstrated also because quantitative modeling is very expensive. We computationally demonstrated that the alignment of nanorods and proteins is possible with a standard laser technology. We performed a comprehensive analysis on the dependence of the degree of alignment on molecular properties and experimental details, e.g., particle temperature and laser-pulse energy. Considering the polarizability anisotropy of about 150,000 proteins, our analysis revealed that most of these proteins can be aligned using realistic experimental parameters.
Authors
- Jochen Küpper (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4395-9345)
- Jean‐Michel Hartmann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3687-989X)
- Muhamed Amin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3146-150X)
- Amit K. Samanta (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8577-6761)
Institutions
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- École Polytechnique (FR)
- Universität Hamburg (DE)
- University of Groningen (NL)
- Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (FR)
- Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY (DE)
- Sorbonne Université (FR)
- Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (FR)
- École Normale Supérieure (BI)
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (US)
- Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of the American Chemical Society
- Published
- 2025-02-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c15679
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Advanced X-ray Imaging Techniques
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.88
Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Seventh Framework Programme