Impact of molecular properties on diffraction at nanomasks with low charge density

Abstract

The quantum wave nature of matter is a cornerstone of modern physics, which has been demonstrated for a wide range of fundamental and composite particles. While diffraction at nanomechanical masks is usually regarded to be independent of atomic or molecular internal states, the particles' polarisabilities and dipole moments lead to dispersive interactions with the grating surface. In prior experiments, such forces largely prevented matter-wave experiments with polar molecules, as they led to dephasing of the matter wave in the presence of randomly distributed charges incorporated into the grating. Here we show that ion-beam milling using neon facilitates the fabrication of lowly-charged nanomasks in gold-capped silicon nitride membranes. This allows us to observe the diffraction of polar molecules with a four times larger electric dipole moment than in previous experiments. This new capability opens a path to the assessment of the structure of polar molecules in matter-wave diffraction experiments.