Molecular beam sorting by $\alpha $/m: from fullerenes to carbon nanotubes

We show that a matter-wave interferometer can be used to sort gas phase molecules according to their polarizability-to-mass ratio $\alpha /$m. We present a proof-of-principle experiment for the separation of C$_{60}$ and C$_{70}$. We propose to exploit the high molecular throughput and high spatial resolution of our setup for the enrichment of different biomolecular conformers or mixtures of single-walled carbon nanotubes with strongly varying $\alpha /$m-ratios inside a grating-based Stark deflectometer.