Structural Information of Biological Molecules at Atomic Resolution

SIBMAR aims at high resolution structural information of individual biological molecules by employing coherent low energy electron waves. Partners from the Institute of Scientific Instruments Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Brno, the Physics Department of the University of Manchester and the Physics-Institute of the University of Zurich are involved in SIBMAR.

The overall idea is to apply holography with low energy electrons to investigate the structure of individual biological molecules. Major experimental challenges are to improve the interference resolution in electron holograms, establish methods for creating free standing thin films transparent for low energy electrons as well as appropriate techniques to present a single protein to the coherent electron wave front.

Next to these experimental issues, a second, equally important aspect for achieving high resolution structural information is the reconstruction of the electron holograms. This is achieved by back-propagating the object wave information, recorded in the hologram plane, by employing a numerical algorithm to solve the integrals governing this coherent optics problem.