Sensitivity of a superconducting nanowire detector for single ions at low energy.

We report on the characterization of a superconducting nanowire detector for ions at low kinetic energies. We measure the absolute single-particle detection efficiency η and trace its increase with energy up to η = 100%. We discuss the influence of noble gas adsorbates on the cryogenic surface and analyze their relevance for the detection of slow massive particles.

A superconducting NbN detector for neutral nanoparticles.

We present a proof-of-principle study of superconducting single photon detectors (SSPD) for the detection of individual neutral molecules/nanoparticles at low energies. The new detector is applied to characterize a laser desorption source for biomolecules and allows retrieval of the arrival time distribution of a pulsed molecular beam containing the amino acid tryptophan, the polypeptide gramicidin as well as insulin, myoglobin and hemoglobin. We discuss the experimental evidence that the detector is actually sensitive to isolated neutral particles.

UV and VUV ionization of organic molecules, clusters, and complexes.

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.

Gas-phase formation of large neutral alkaline-earth metal tryptophan complexes.

We report on the first observation of isolated large neutral metal amino acid complexes such as Trp(n)Me(k), with Me=Ca, Ba, Sr, cluster combinations covering n=1...