We developed micro-liquid enclosure arrays (MLEAs) for holding solution samples in coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) using x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). Hundreds of fully isolated micro-liquid enclosures are arranged in a single MLEA chip for efficient measurement, where each enclosure is destroyed after exposure to a single XFEL pulse. A semi-automated MLEA assembling system was also developed to enclose solution samples into MLEAs efficiently at high precision. We performed XFEL-based CDI experiments using MLEAs and imaged in-solution structures of self-assembled gold nanoparticles. The sample hit rate can be optimized by adjusting solution concentration, and we achieved a single-particle hit rate of 31%, which is not far from the theoretical upper limit of 37% derived from the Poisson statistics. MELAs allow us to perform CDI measurement under controlled solution conditions and will help reveal the nanostructures and dynamics of particles in solution.

中文翻译：

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用于溶液中样品的 X 射线自由电子激光衍射成像的微液封闭阵列及其半自动组装系统

我们开发了微液体外壳阵列 (MLEA)，用于使用 X 射线自由电子激光器 (XFEL) 在相干衍射成像 (CDI) 中保存溶液样品。数百个完全隔离的微液体外壳排列在单个 MLEA 芯片中以进行高效测量，每个外壳在暴露于单个 XFEL 脉冲后都会被破坏。还开发了半自动 MLEA 组装系统，以将溶液样品高效、高精度地封装到 MLEA 中。我们使用 MLEA 和成像的自组装金纳米粒子的溶液中结构进行了基于 XFEL 的 CDI 实验。样品命中率可以通过调整溶液浓度来优化，我们实现了31%的单粒子命中率，与泊松统计得出的37%的理论上限相差不远。