Towards matter-wave experiments with biomolecules : generation and detection of neutral biomolecular beams

The thesis aimed to identify chemical modifications for biomolecules such as peptides and proteins to make these amenable for matter‐wave interference experiments. Crucial for matter‐wave interference experiments are charge neutral biomolecular beams, which had previously only been successfully formed for small peptides in a limited number of studies. Accordingly, a main focus of the thesis was set on the formation of such beams in close collaboration with M. Arndt's group in Vienna. A second difficulty arises from the fact that neutral molecules are not detectable with common mass spectrometer detectors, i.e. electron multipliers. Consequently the ionization of neutral protein beams in high vacuum was a second central point of the presented studies. Various methods and approaches were investigated whereby the contribution of the author was concentrated on the design, synthesis and expression of the constructs for interrogation in matterwave experiments.