A call for proposal will open in September 2026. Follow these links to read more about MAX IV Access modes and Call for proposals. Below you find more information about what MicroMAX offers.

All users are encouraged to get in contact before submitting a proposal.

Overview

The centre of the MicroMAX experiment setup is the diffractometer that is a high-precision device for single crystal rotation crystallography but that is also used for different serial crystallography sample delivery methods. The sample can be cooled with a cryogenic nitrogen stream, exposed to laser light and also exchanged with a robotic sample changer. The X-ray beam can be adjusted both in terms of beam size (presently down to 5 micrometer) and flux (presently up to 10^14 photons/s) and short X-ray pulses created with an X-ray chopper (down to 10 microseconds). A high-performant photon-counting detector is the ideal choice for rotational crystallography while the integrating detector allows for example short, high-intensity X-ray pulses. The second hutch houses the nanosecond laser and an offline UV/vis spectroscopy setup.

Serial and time-resolved crystallography

The MD3-UP diffractometer is used for all different sample delivery methods including fixed-targets (SPINE-based), the high-viscosity extruder injector and other flow cells. During the Spring 2026 cycle the Eiger2 X CdTe 9M detector is available for these experiments. MicroMAX is is equipped with two monochromators, a double-crystal monochromator giving 10^13 photons/s and a multilayer monochromator giving flux above 10^14 photons/s with flexible focusing, presently down to 5 micrometers. An X-ray chopper can use this for giving X-ray pulses down to 10 microseconds. Auxilliary equipment includes a tunable nanosecond laser and an offline UV/vis spectroscopy laboratory.

Single crystal rotational crystallography

The beamline is open for proposals in the Spring 2026 call also for rotational crystallography with the MD3-UP diffractometer, ISARA sample changer and Eiger2 X CdTe 9M detector using the crystal monochromator and CRL focusing (beam size down to 5 micrometer). NOTE: Remote sample changer assisted rotational crystallography is still in commissioning and the experiment control in development. This functionality is planned to be in operation from Fall 2025 run. Since this functionality overlaps with BioMAX we strongly encourage users to apply for both beamlines so that the choice of beamline can be decided at the time of scheduling.

Sample preparation

The sample environment and preparation laboratories are equipped with the following instruments:

  • Protein Crystallization Robot, Oryx4, Douglas Instruments
  • 96 channel electronic pipette, Mini 96, INTEGRA
  • Humidity chamber, MiTeGen
  • VHX-7000N Digital Microscope, Keyence.
  • Microscope for high resolution, Olympus BX53
  • Stereo microscopes for interactive manipulation
  • Offline injector setup, currently for HVE and Serial-X injectors, can be adapted to other injectors.

The prep-lab is optimized and equipped for preparing samples in low-light of different spectrum or dark conditions.

Data handling and processing

The image data generated by the Eiger detector are written in HDF5 format. There is a master file in each dataset, which contains the experimental instrumentation information. Read more about data handling, automated data reduction pipelines (rotational crystallography) and manual data processing after beamtime.

To meet the needs for (time-resolved) serial crystallography experiments, a CrystFEL-based processing pipeline is being developed in-house. As soon as data has been collected, the pipeline is launched automatically. During and after beamtime, users can process the data manually on the online and offline HPC clusters respectively. In addition to the MAX IV computational nodes, MicroMAX has 20 dedicated CPU nodes (960 cores in total) from March 2025 for its users.

Acknowledgement

Results from MicroMAX, in addition to the general acknowledgement for MAX IV, must include the following acknowledgement: “MicroMAX is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation under the grant number NNF17CC0030666”