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Updated: Jun 20, 2026

Molecular Beam Mass Spectrometry With Tunable Vacuum Ultraviolet (VUV) Synchrotron Radiation
Published on: October 30, 2012
UV and VUV ionization of organic molecules, clusters, and complexes
Markus Marksteiner1, Philipp Haslinger, Michele Sclafani
1Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. markus.arndt@univie.ac.at
Abstract:
The generation of organic particle beams is studied in combination with photoionization using UV radiation at 266 nm and vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light at 157 nm. Single-photon ionization with pulsed VUV light turns out to be sensitive enough to detect various large neutral biomolecular complexes ranging from metal-amino acid complexes to nucleotide clusters and aggregates of polypeptides. Different biomolecular clusters are shown to exhibit rather specific binding characteristics with regard to the various metals that are codesorbed in the source. We also find that the ion signal of gramicidin can be increased by a factor of 15 when the photon energy is increased from 4.66 to 7.9 eV.
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