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The world's first electron diffractometer offers measurement results of unprecedented quality for the pharmaceutical, electromobility and new materials sectors.

The Experience Center for Electron Diffraction has now started operations in Basel-Allschwil. The Swiss company ELDICO Scientific operates the world's first electron diffractometer there. The Experience Center's long-term contractual customers include the companies Hoffmann-LaRoche, Idorsia as well as Boehringer-Ingelheim from Germany and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute (SNI). In addition, the Experience Center is open to other users with a broad portfolio of nanocrystallographic services. Interested customers can send in material samples, which will be processed quickly and reliably by experienced scientific staff.

The festive launch event now took place in the presence of outstanding representatives of European crystallography at the world's leading centre for the pharmaceutical industry in Basel (Switzerland). More than 250 guests gathered on site and online for a top-class scientific discussion event.

The Experience Centre went into regular operation a few weeks ago after successful test runs. A number of structures were recently solved, including paracetamol, metaxalone, histidine and febuxostat. The results of the measurements were documented at www.eldico-scientific.com/2-eldico/193-experimental-results-on-eldico-ed-1 and demonstrate the performance of the analytical instrumentation. The measurements were performed on an ELDICO ED-1. This is a novel instrument that combines an electron beam of radically simplified design with a goniometer, precise down to the sub-micrometer level. Building on proven approaches from X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy, the new tool combines the best of these worlds, enabling diffraction experiments at the nano-scale in an easy-to-install, user-friendly device.

"With the Experience Center, we are making it easier for crystallographers from the pharmaceutical and other industries to get started with nanocrystallography and enable them to deliver the structural information that is important for academic and commercial research faster, in better quality and at a competitive price. The ELDICO ED-1 installed in Basel delivers excellent analytical results even for challenging organic compounds," says Dr Eric Hovestreydt, founder and Chief Commercial Officer of ELDICO Scientific. This allows samples to be analyzed that were previously too small and therefore inaccessible for crystallographic analysis.

The ELDICO ED-1 was developed exclusively for crystallographic applications. It is a smart combination of a five-axis, 360° rotation, submicrometer-precise goniometer and a 160 keV electron beam with specifically designed optics. ELDICO’s ED-1 has Dectris inside: the powerful QUADRO is the most proven detector that is well suited for electrons. The cryo function, available as an option, provides cooling by conduction to support near liquid nitrogen temperatures. “We have tailored our system to strictly adhere to the most essential specifications – this is why we can claim ELDICO ED-1 is made ‘by crystallographers, for crystallographers’”, says Eric Hovestreydt.

With its superior features, the ELDKICO ED-1 outperforms any other method used for nano-sized samples. The diffractometer is designed to measure samples in the range from 10 to 1,000 nm and is targeted to provide resolution of up to 0.84 Å with at least 60-70% complete datasets having an Rint<20%. This data typically allows for structure solution and refinement down to R1 values of 10% in 75% of cases, with unit cell determination as accurate as 1:1,000.

Electron diffraction is a powerful analytical technique that provides the basis for innovation in many industries. Applications range from academic crystallography to large and fast-growing industries such as pharmaceuticals, battery research and advanced materials. The pharmaceutical industry in particular is enabled to accelerate its research and development.

As a joint initiative of ELDICO Scientific and Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area, the Experience Center represents a relevant addition to the analytical infrastructure at the Basel research location. With its offer the Experience Center is closing a significant gap in the market. Nanocrystallographic services are now made available on an industrial scale. This was not possible anywhere until now, because today such analyses are carried out on expensive and technically demanding electron microscopes. These are operated by universities and occasionally by large industrial companies and are as such not generally accessible.

About ELDICO Scientific AG

ELDICO Scientific AG (the Electron Diffraction Company) is a Swiss technology and service company founded in 2019 and based at the Switzerland Innovation Park Innovaare at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), one of the world’s leading research institutes for natural sciences and engineering. ELDICO develops, manufactures and commercializes electron diffractometers: novel analytical instruments for electron-based crystallography that make it possible to investigate nanocrystalline samples. ELDICO will be launching the first instrument specifically designed for nanocrystallographic investigations. Proof-of-concept was achieved in 2018 (ETH Zurich, C-CINA Basel) as part of a Nano-Argovia project of the Swiss Nanoscience Institute (SNI). It was published in 2018 and awarded as a Top 5 "Breakthrough of the Year 2018" by the leading science magazine SCIENCE. In 2020, among other public recognitions on the Swiss and EU level, ELDICO took second place in the prestigious Pioneer Prize awarded by Technopark Zurich and the Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB). ELDICO’s clients are industrial and academic researchers in large and fast-growing industries such as the pharmaceutical, electromobility and advanced materials/MOF sector. ELDICO partners with established engineering companies and component suppliers – including Dectris, a world-leading supplier of detectors – to deliver superior performance.