THE USE OF SYNCHROTRON RADIATION TIME RESOLVED LAUE DIFFRACTION FOR STUDYING TRANSITIONS WITHIN SINGLE-CRYSTALS

Preliminary experiments are reported which illustrate the potential of Laue diffraction for time dependent studies of single crystals. In the first a crystal of phosphonitrilic chloride, P4N4Cl8, undergoes an irreversible transformation at 338 K, in which the molecular conformation is changed from boat to chair. The second example follows the diffraction pattern as a crystal of 2-bromobenzophenone is melted by the energy of the synchrotron radiation white beam (in 6 minutes). The third example shows the disordering/reordering phenomenon that occurs when a substrate analogue is soaked into a crystal of the enzyme phospholipase-c.