5. Terahertz Devices and Systems for the Spectroscopic Analysis of Biomolecules—“Complexity Great and Small”

The world has an ever-growing need to understand the complexity of biomolecules from fields as far ranging as drug design Hajduk and Geer, Nat Rev 6(3):211, 2007, [1] and Congreve et al., Prog Med Chem 53(1), 2014, [2], crop characterization Ge et al., 15(6):12560, 2015, [3] and organic electronics Gao et al., Phys Rev Lett 114(12):128701, 2015, [4]. There are many scientific techniques for studying bio-molecules namely mass spectroscopy (MS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), droplet single biomolecule studies, spectroscopy, biocalorimetry, chromatography, crystallography, electrophoresis, and bioinformatics. In this chapter the focus will be on the study of biomolecules using the relatively new technique of terahertz spectroscopy. This chapter will draw on the THz spectroscopy work of the authors and others to demonstrate the need to understand both the biomolecule and its water environment, which provide both great (biomolecule) and small (water) complexity.