Evidence of surface catalytic effect on cosmic dust grain analogues: the ammonia and carbon dioxide surface reaction

Abstract

Surface chemistry on cosmic dust grains plays an important role in the formation of molecules at low temperatures in the interstellar and circumstellar environments. For the first time, we experimentally put in evidence the catalytic role of dust surfaces using the thermal reaction CO2 + 2NH3 = NH4+NH2COO-, which is also a proxy of radical-radical reactions. Nanometre-sized amorphous silicate and carbon grains produced in our laboratory were used as grain analogues. Surface catalysis on grains accelerates the kinetics of the reaction studied at a temperature of 80 K by a factor of up to 3 compared to the reaction occurring in the molecular solid. The evidence of the catalytic effect of grain surfaces opens a door for experiments and calculations on the surface formation of interstellar and circumstellar molecules on dust. Ammonium carbamate on the surface of grains or released intact into protostellar or protoplanetary disk phases can give start to a network of prebiotic reactions. Therefore, there should be a great interest to search for ammonium carbamate and its daughter molecule, carbamic acid, in interstellar clouds, protostellar envelopes, and protoplanetary disks.

References in corpus (5)

• Photochemistry and astrochemistry: photochemical pathways to interstellar complex organic molecules
• The origin of complex organic molecules in prestellar cores
• Origin of the RNA World: The Fate of Nucleobases in Warm Little Ponds
• Atom addition reactions in interstellar ice analogues
• The CO-H2 van der Waals complex and complex organic molecules in cold molecular clouds: a TMC-1C survey

Cited by in corpus (16)

• A pathway to peptides in space through the condensation of atomic carbon
• An overview of desorption parameters of Volatile and Complex Organic Molecules: A systematic dig on experimental literature
• Ammonia snow-lines and ammonium salts desorption
• Neural-Network Assisted Study of Nitrogen Atom Dynamics on Amorphous Solid Water. I. Adsorption & Desorption
• A New "Non-energetic" Route to Complex Organic Molecules in Astrophysical Environments: The C + H${}_2$O $\to$ H${}_2$CO Solid-state Reaction
• Thermal formation of ammonium carbamate on the surface of laboratory analogues of carbonaceous grains in protostellar envelopes and planet-forming disks
• Chemical modelling of dust-gas chemistry within AGB outflows III. Photoprocessing of the ice and return to the ISM
• Simple molecules and complex chemistry in a protoplanetary disk: A JWST investigation of the highly inclined disk d216-0939
• Laboratory-based sticking coefficients for ices on a variety of small grains analogs
• Systems Astrochemistry: A New Doctrine for Experimental Studies
• INFRA-ICE: an ultra-high vacuum experimental station for laboratory astrochemistry
• Density Functional Theory Calculations on the Interstellar Formation of Biomolecules
• Catalytic role of HI in the interstellar synthesis of complex organic molecule
• Water Nucleation via Transient Bonds to Oxygen Functionalized Graphite
• Identification of Ammonium Salts on Comet 67P/C-G Surface from Infrared VIRTIS/Rosetta Data Based on Laboratory Experiments. Implications and Perspectives
• Ice coverage of dust grains in cold astrophysical environments