Our research combines a number of advanced physical chemistry techniques for a novel approach to the study of individual molecules.
* We use short laser pulses to lift molecules from surfaces (laser desorption).
* We subsequently photoionize those molecules by several more lasers.
* We detect the resulting ions with a mass spectrometer.

There are two directions to this research:

With gas phase techniques we study isolated molecules, free of interactions.

We explore state of the art analytical applications, analyzing fragile organics by laser mass spectrometry

A major thrust is the laser spectroscopy of isolated biomolecular building blocks. These include single DNA bases and amino acids, as well as their clusters with each other and with water molecules.