Shedding Light on Heavy Molecules, One by One

Abstract

A review with 39 refs. By combining laser desorption and entrainment in a supersonic beam, it is possible to study large and frail mols. in the gas phase. Such mols. have very low vapor pressures and would normally decomp. when heated. A beam of large cooled mols. can be created by entraining laser desorbed neutral mols. in a supersonic expansion. The authors demonstrate REMPI spectroscopy of mols. with masses of several thousands of Daltons. This capability is applied to study internal and external dimer formation in polymers. Examples of vibronic spectroscopy of jet cooled small biomols. and their clusters, such as dipeptides, nucleosides and DNA base-pairs are presented.