An electropneumatic cleaning device for piezo-actuator-driven picolitre-droplet dispensers

Alexander Berkes; Stephan Kleine-Doepke; Jan-Philipp Leimkohl; Hendrik Schikora; Pedram Mehrabi; Friedjof Tellkamp; Eike C Schulz

doi:10.1107/S1600576723009573

An electropneumatic cleaning device for piezo-actuator-driven picolitre-droplet dispensers

J Appl Crystallogr. 2024 Feb 1;57(Pt 1):209-214. doi: 10.1107/S1600576723009573.

Authors

Alexander Berkes¹, Stephan Kleine-Doepke¹, Jan-Philipp Leimkohl², Hendrik Schikora², Pedram Mehrabi^{1

2}, Friedjof Tellkamp², Eike C Schulz^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Nanostructure and Solid State Physics, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
² Max-Planck-Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg, Germany.
³ University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg, Germany.

Abstract

Recently, we introduced the liquid application method for time-resolved analyses (LAMA). The time-consuming cleaning cycles required for the substrate solution exchange and storage of the sensitive droplet-dispenser nozzles present practical challenges. In this work, a dispenser cleaning system for the semi-automated cleaning of the piezo-actuator-driven picolitre-droplet dispensers required for LAMA is introduced to streamline typical workflows.

Keywords: droplet deposition; piezo-actuators; serial crystallography; time-resolved crystallography.

Grants and funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Max Planck Society. PM acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (grant No. 451079909) and from a Joachim Herz Stiftung add-on fellowship. ES acknowledges support by the DFG (grant No. 458246365) and by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (grant No. 01KI2114).