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Chemistry in Titan's N2-CH4 atmosphere produces complex organic aerosols. Thechemical processes and the resulting organic compounds are still far fromunderstood, although extensive observations, laboratory, and theoreticalsimulations have greatly improved physical and chemical constraints on Titan'satmosphere. Here, we conduct a series of Titan atmosphere simulationexperiments with N2-CH4 gas mixtures and investigate the effect of initial CH4ratio, pressure, and flow rate on the production rates and composition of thegas and solid products at a Titan relevant temperature (100 K) for the firsttime. We find that the production rate of the gas and solid products increaseswith increasing CH4 ratio. The nitrogen-containing species have much higheryield than hydrocarbons in the gas products, and the N-to-C ratio of the solidproducts appears to be the highest compared to previous plasma simulations withthe same CH4 ratio. The greater degree of nitrogen incorporation in the lowtemperature simulation experiments suggests temperature may play an importantrole in nitrogen incorporation in Titan's cold atmosphere. We also find that H2is the dominant gas product and serves as an indicator of the production rateof new organic molecules in the experiment, and that CH2NH may greatlycontribute to the incorporation of both carbon and nitrogen into the solidparticles. The pressure and flow rate affect the amount of time of the gasmixture exposed to the energy source and therefore impact the N2-CH4 chemistryinitiated by the plasma discharge, emphasizing the influence of the energy fluxin Titan atmospheric chemistry.

Titan Atmospheric Chemistry Revealed by Low-temperature N2-CH4 Plasma Discharge Experiments