Laser-induced acoustic desorption of thermally stable and unstable biomolecules

Abstract

We evaluated the effect of the laser-induced acoustic desorption (LIAD) process on thermally stable and unstable biomolecules. We found that the thermally labile glycine molecule fragmented following desorption via LIAD, due to the production of hot molecules from the LIAD process. We furthermore observed a rise in translational temperature with increasing desorption laser intensity, while the forward velocity was invariant with respect to the desorption laser intensity for both glycine and adenine molecules. The forward kinetic energy was in the range of the surface stress energy, which supports the previously proposed stress-induced desorption model for the laser-induced acoustic desorption process.