Production and Study of Titan's Aerosols Analogues with A RF Low Pressure Plasma Discharge

The atmosphere of Titan, the biggest satellite of Saturn, contains aerosols produced by the organic chemistry induced by the photochemistry of N2 and CH4, the major gaseous atmospheric compounds. In spite of their importance for the properties of the Titan's atmosphere, and for organic chemistry, only few direct information are available about them because of the limitations of the observational techniques, and their processes of formation and growth are not understood. In order to bring answers to these questions, we developed a new type of laboratory simulation to produce analogues of Titan's aerosols (known as tholins) with a low pressure Radio Frequency plasma discharge. The main originality of this experiment (named PAMPRE) comes from its ability to produce particles in volume, as they are maintained in levitation by electrostatic forces compensating gravity, whereas the other experiments produce tholins on the reactors walls or a substrate. We initiated our investigations by a study of the properties of the produced particles as a function of the plasma operating conditions (i.e. amount of CH4 in N2, injected RF power, pressure, and gas flow). We here present the results of this study