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Smith, Thomas

Publications and source records attributed to Smith, Thomas.

AMX – the highly automated macromolecular crystallography (17-ID-1) beamline at the NSLS-II

The highly automated macromolecular crystallography beamline AMX/17-ID-1 is an undulator-based high-intensity (>5 × 10 12 photons s −1 ), micro-focus (7 µm × 5 µm), low-divergence (1 mrad × 0.35 mrad) energy-tunable (5–18 keV) beamline at the NSLS-II, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA. It is one of the three life science beamlines constructed by the NIH under the ABBIX project and it shares sector 17-ID with the FMX beamline, the frontier micro-focus macromolecular crystallography beamline. AMX saw first light in March 2016 and started general user operation in February 2017. At AMX, emphasis has been placed on high throughput, high capacity, and automation to enable data collection from the most challenging projects using an intense micro-focus beam. Here, the current state and capabilities of the beamline are reported, and the different macromolecular crystallography experiments that are routinely performed at AMX/17-ID-1 as well as some plans for the near future are presented.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Ultrafast inorganic scintillator-based front imager for Gigahertz Hard X-ray imaging

State-of-the art X-ray imaging cameras using silicon sensors for X-ray detection have demonstrated a frame-rate of 10 MHz and excellent performance for X-ray energies below 20 keV. We proposed a pixelated ultrafast inorganic scintillator-based front imager for GHz hard X-ray imaging. Here, the proposed imager is featured with a total absorption for hard X-ray photons, and provides sub-ns scintillation pulse width crucial for X-ray bunches of a few ns spacing foreseen at the proposed MaRIE facility. We measured temporal response of a dozen ultrafast and fast inorganic scintillators at the 10-ID-B site of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) of ANL. Crystal's response to hybrid X-ray beam of 30 keV, consisting of singlet bunches of 50 ps width and septuplet bunches of 27 ps width with 2.83 ns bunch spacing, was measured. Ultrafast inorganic scintillators, such as BaF 2 :Y and ZnO:Ga, show clearly resolved X-ray bunches for septuplets, as well as no degradation of amplitude for continuous eight septuplets, providing a proof of principle for the ultrafast inorganic scintillator-based total absorption front imager for the proposed MaRIE project.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Space Structure Development

The duration of my Summer 2015 Internship Tour at NASA's Johnson Space Center was spent working in the Structural Engineering Division's Structures Branch. One of the two main roles of the Structures Branch, ES2, is to ensure the structural integrity of spacecraft vehicles and the structural subsystems needed to support those vehicles. The other main objective of this branch is to develop the lightweight structures that are necessary to take humans beyond Low-Earth Orbit. Within ES2, my four projects involved inflatable space structure air bladder material testing; thermal and impact material testing for spacecraft windows; structural analysis on a joint used in the Boeing CST-100 airbag system; and an additive manufacturing design project.

Smith, Thomas↗