Seeding grain nucleation and dust growth: Ionisation, epoxidation and charge disproportionation effects

TL;DR

This paper investigates dust seeding mechanisms involving ionisation, epoxidation, and charge disproportionation at nanometer scales, highlighting their roles in dust nucleation and growth in astrophysical environments.

Contribution

It introduces a size-dependent framework for understanding dust seed formation driven by ionisation, chemical reactions, and electrostatic effects in interstellar and circumstellar regions.

Findings

Photo-initiated ionisation and epoxidation influence dust nucleation.

Charge disproportionation affects seed cluster charge distribution.

Electrostatic effects may facilitate nanoparticle growth in various astrophysical settings.

Abstract

This work studies the likely dust seeding processes arising from alkali metal and alkaline earth ionisation, epoxidation (epoxide bond formation via oxygen atom insertion into C=C bonds), and grain charge disproportionation (the existence around the uncharged state of oxidised cationic and reduced anionic states) at (sub-)nanometre size scales. The chemical, physical, and photon-initiated processes leading to dust seeding are explored within the framework of the size-dependent physical, optical, and photoelectric properties of the THEMIS carbonaceous nanoparticles. The critical grain charge states at (sub-)nanometre size scales are derived as a function of the interstellar and circumstellar physical conditions. Photo-initiated low-energy ionisation, epoxide reactions, and disproportionation-driven electrostatic effects could play key roles in seeding dust nucleation and growth. The size-dependent seed cluster and nanograin charge distribution is shown to encompass both positive and negative charges where the ionisation is driven by low ionisation metals or by weak attenuation. Cluster seeding via ionisation and epoxidation could help to explain the co-spatial and contemporaneous nucleation and growth of both carbon-rich and oxygen-rich dust in the same regions. This may be enhanced by electrostatic effects, driven by charge disproportionation, between negatively-charged, nucleation-seeding, polyatomic clusters and positively-charged ions or larger (nano)particles. Such processes could occur in the dust-forming regions in novae, Wolf-Rayet, and Luminous Blue Variable systems and electrostatic effects may also aid the accretion of nanoparticles in the outer regions of molecular clouds.