Over 100 years ago, William Lawrence Bragg published the structure of the zinc aperture measured by Laue using X-ray crystallography and others using X-ray diffraction patterns. If you direct X-rays onto a crystalline material you will receive an X-ray diffraction pattern.
This diffraction pattern can be detected and analyzed with a detector. It gives a 3D representation of a crystal and the molecules or atoms present. This is also known as X-ray crystallography.
In contrast to X-rays, electron diffraction is used instead as a radiation source. One also speaks of electron crystallography, also known as nanocrystallography. Additionally, it can be used to irradiate nanocrystals instead of crystals of millimeters. The reason for this is simple: electrons can interact with the matter much more than X-rays.
If you try to grow single crystals as a scientist, which should be used for X-ray diffraction experiments, you will find that this is very tedious, complicated, or even almost impossible. However, with crystallography, you no longer have this problem. This saves time, money, and resources.
In practice, pharmaceutical companies can characterize potential drug candidates much faster. The number of potential drug candidates could increase by a factor of 3-4. But not only pharmaceutical companies can benefit from this technology, the areas of energy, chemistry, and agrochemistry can also benefit massively.
Such “electron diffractometers” are already offered by the company ELDICO Scientific from Switzerland.