LiXEdrom: Innovative measuring chamber for X-ray study of liquid jets
X-rays are the medium of choice for many scientific studies. When you shine them on a sample, they literally shed light on the material's structure, providing loads of information about it. Unfortunately, this mostly applies to solids only, since the sample has to be in a vacuum for the entire time it is being irradiated with soft X-rays. For liquids, that means you have to remove all the water. In the case of biological samples such as proteins, however, this destroys their natural environment. The solution to this problems has always been to measure liquids through membranes. These membranes keep the evacuated side separate from the non-evacuated side. The trouble is, one can never really be sure whether or not membrane effects are distorting the measurement results...