Nucleation studies under the conditions of carbon-rich AGB star envelopes: TiC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nucleation of titanium carbide particles in the dust-forming regions of carbon-rich AGB star envelopes, emphasizing the role of TiC alongside carbon in dust formation.

Contribution

It provides molecular properties of titanium carbide clusters using density functional theory and explores their homogeneous nucleation under circumstellar conditions.

Findings

Estimated molecular properties of TiC clusters.

Implications for TiC nucleation in stellar environments.

Enhanced understanding of dust composition in AGB stars.

Abstract

Many studies of especially dust nucleation in winds of carbon-rich AGB stars consider primarily carbon as dust forming material. But dust grains formed in such circumstellar envelopes are rather a mixture of several chemical elements such as titanium or silicon in addition to the main component carbon as verified by many investigations of pre-solar grains enclosed in meteorites, for example. In this contribution we focus on the study of the nucleation of titanium carbide particles from the gas phase. Therefore, the necessary properties of molecular titanium carbide clusters have been estimated within density functional approaches and first implications on the homogeneous nucleation of TiC are studied for conditions being representative for circumstellar dust shells around carbon-rich AGB stars.