Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 107, Issue 28, Pages 12423-12428Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0913353107
Keywords
atmospheric chemistry; N(D-2); cyanomethylene; prebiotic
Categories
Funding
- NASA [NNG05GO58G, NNX08AO13G, NNX09AM95G]
- Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the US Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- NASA [NNX09AM95G, 111496, 97116, NNX08AO13G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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Many aspects of the nitrogen fixation process by photochemistry in the Titan atmosphere are not fully understood. The recent Cassini mission revealed organic aerosol formation in the upper atmosphere of Titan. It is not clear, however, how much and by what mechanism nitrogen is incorporated in Titan's organic aerosols. Using tunable synchrotron radiation at the Advanced Light Source, we demonstrate the first evidence of nitrogenated organic aerosol production by extreme ultraviolet-vacuum ultraviolet irradiation of a N-2/CH4 gas mixture. The ultrahigh-mass-resolution study with laser desorption ionization-Fourier transform-ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry of N-2/CH4 photolytic solid products at 60 and 82.5 nm indicates the predominance of highly nitrogenated compounds. The distinct nitrogen incorporations at the elemental abundances of H2C2N and HCN, respectively, are suggestive of important roles of H2C2N/HCCN and HCN/CN in their formation. The efficient formation of unsaturated hydrocarbons is observed in the gas phase without abundant nitrogenated neutrals at 60 nm, and this is confirmed by separately using C-13 and N-15 isotopically labeled initial gas mixtures. These observations strongly suggest a heterogeneous incorporation mechanism via short lived nitrogenated reactive species, such as HCCN radical, for nitrogenated organic aerosol formation, and imply that substantial amounts of nitrogen is fixed as organic macromolecular aerosols in Titan's atmosphere.
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