In serial crystallography with a tape drive, a thin line of a micro-crystal suspension is continuously written onto a thin moving Mylar- or Kapton foil tape. The tape is constantly moving and thereby transporting the microcrystals into the X-ray beam, where diffraction patterns of them are recorded.

Using the serial crystallography approach, diffraction patterns from hundreds to thousands of microcrystals can be merged to yield a complete dataset for structure refinement. 

The tape drive is ideally suited for chemical mixing experiments or laser pump probe experiments where larger amounts of protein crystals are availalbe