From protein crystallography to industry: Overview paper on hybrid photon counting
Ever since 2006, hybrid photon counting (HPC) detectors have radically transformed basic research at synchrotron lights sources. The technology has also already advanced a wide range of applications in laboratory, industry, and medicine, as well as on electron microscopy.
Where it all began: the first 6M detector at the Swiss Light Source at Paul Scherrer Institut, featuring PSI researchers and DECTRIS founders.
This year the Royal Society is celebrating the 50-year-long success story of synchrotron science in the UK with a theme issue of its journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. The anniversary issue is a wonderful collection of high-value contributions from leading experts in the field. One of the articles featured in the issue is a paper on the impact of hybrid photon counting (HPC) technology, written by DECTRIS employees, Drs. Andreas Förster, Stefan Brandstetter and Clemens Schulze-Briese.
In this peer-reviewed article, the authors survey the history of HPC detectors, explain the underlying technology and then discuss in detail the impact HPC detectors have had on macromolecular crystallography at synchrotron sources. We also get a brief introduction on how the technology has changed a variety of other X-ray based research techniques at synchrotron sources and in laboratories.
This text lays the foundation for an article series describing various industrial applications for hybrid photon counting, the breakthrough detection technology originally created at and for synchrotrons.
