Laser-induced acoustic desorption of thermally stable and unstable biomolecules

TL;DR

This study investigates how laser-induced acoustic desorption affects biomolecules, revealing temperature effects, fragmentation of unstable molecules, and supporting a stress-induced desorption model.

Contribution

It provides experimental insights into the thermal effects and mechanisms of LIAD on both stable and unstable biomolecules, especially glycine and adenine.

Findings

Thermally labile glycine fragments after LIAD due to hot molecules.

Translational temperature increases with laser intensity.

Forward velocity remains constant regardless of laser intensity.

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.