Cold Electrons to Aid Better Design Of Drugs and Materials

A new source of very cold electrons will improve the quality and speed of nanoimaging for drug and materials development to a trillionth of a second. The study published in Nature Physics today was carried out by researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science (CXS), headquartered at the University of Melbourne.

Associate Professor Robert Scholten from the University's School of Physics and the CXS, said the new cold electron source offered potential advances in electron imaging at the atomic or nanoscale which will have real applications in a range of industries including health.

"Enhanced nanoimaging using this cold source will enable us to design better drugs for more targeted treatments. Having a better visibility of the structure of a cell membrane protein and how it functions will assist in more targeted drug design.

"It will also help us understand how vulnerabilities such as cracks form, when designing new materials for advanced technology such as in turbine blades for jet engines.

"Nano imaging using electron microscopy give us intricate images of the micro and nanoscale world, but conventional hot electron sources are incoherent – like the indirect light of light bulbs versus direct laser beams.

"Depending on the target, it can take several minutes to several hours to undergo this process and the image is not very clear.'