Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Planetary Science Journal
Volume
3
Issue
1
Abstract
In Titan’s nitrogen-methane atmosphere, photochemistry leads to the production of complex organic particles, forming Titan’s thick haze layers. Laboratory-produced aerosol analogs, or “tholins,” are produced in a number of laboratories; however, most previous studies have investigated analogs produced by only one laboratory rather than a systematic, comparative analysis. In this study, we performed a comparative study of an important material property, the surface energy, of seven tholin samples produced in three independent laboratories under a broad range of experimental conditions, and we explored their commonalities and differences. All seven tholin samples are found to have high surface energies and are therefore highly cohesive. Thus, if the surface sediments on Titan are similar to tholins, future missions such as Dragonfly will likely encounter sticky sediments. We also identified a commonality between all the tholin samples: a high dispersive (nonpolar) surface energy component of at least 30 mJ m−2. This common property could be shared by the actual haze particles on Titan as well. Given that the most abundant species interacting with the haze on Titan (methane, ethane, and nitrogen) are nonpolar in nature, the dispersive surface energy component of the haze particles could be a determinant factor in condensate−haze and haze−lake liquid interactions on Titan. With this common trait of tholin samples, we confirmed the findings of a previous study by Yu et al. that haze particles are likely good cloud condensation nuclei for methane and ethane clouds and would likely be completely wetted by the hydrocarbon lakes on Titan.
Department
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Original Publication Date
1-1-2022
Object Description
1 PDF file
DOI of published version
10.3847/PSJ/ac3d27
Repository
UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa
Date Digital
2022
Copyright
©2022 The Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Li, Jialin; Yu, Xinting; Sciamma-O’Brien, Ella; He, Chao; Sebree, Joshua A.; Salama, Farid; Hörst, Sarah M.; and Zhang, Xi, "A Cross-Laboratory Comparison Study Of Titan Haze Analogs: Surface Energy" (2022). Faculty Publications. 5223.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facpub/5223
Comments
First published in The Planetary Science Journal, 3(2) (2022) published by IOP Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/ac3d27