BL03HB: a Laue microdiffraction beamline for both protein crystallography and materials science at SSRF

A Laue microdiffraction beamline (BL03HB) was constructed at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF). This beamline features two consecutive focusing points in two different sectors within its end station, the first dedicated to protein crystallography and the other tailored to materials science applications. Based on a superbend dipole magnet with a magnetic field of 2.29 T, a two-stage focusing design was implemented with two sets of Kirkpatrick-Baez mirrors to achieve a micro white beam as small as 4.2 \({\upmu }\)m \(\times\)4.3 \({\upmu }\)m at the first sector and 0.9 \({\upmu }\)m \(\times\)1.3 \({\upmu }\)m at the second sector in the standard beamline operation mode at SSRF. The X-ray microbeam in the two sectors can be easily switched between monochromatic and white beams by moving a four-bounce monochromator in or out of the light path, respectively. In the protein crystallography sector, white-beam Laue microdiffraction was demonstrated to successfully determine the structure of protein crystals from only a few images of diffraction data collected by a Pilatus 2 M area detector. In the materials science sector, the white-beam Laue diffraction was collected in a reflection geometry using another Pilatus 2 M area detector, which could map the microstructural distribution on the sample surface by scanning the samples. In general, the BL03HB beamline promotes the application of Laue microdiffraction in both protein crystallography and materials science. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the BL03HB beamline, end station, and the first commission results.