Gold, Glass, and Garnets: A Micromanufactured Diode Beamstop

Beamline improvements through the years have been critical for maintaining high throughput and reliability on macromolecular crystallography synchrotron beamlines. At the BCSB, development of microparts and assembly procedures are becoming more important in order to continually evolve our beamlines. I will present innovations and improvements in potential beam measurement strategies utilizing a diode beamstop system, developed in house at the BCSB. There have been four generations in the development process of the diode beamstop (DBS), resulting in the development of unique micromanufacturing processes. These will be described, and the specifics of each generation of the DBS as well as the most recent results from the use of the DBS will be presented.