Identification of nitrogenous organic species in Titan aerosols analogs: Nitrogen fixation routes in early atmospheres

Titan, an icy world surrounded by auburn organic haze, is considered as one of the best targets for studying abiotic planetary organic chemistry. In spite of a great many efforts being made, the chemistry in Titan’s atmosphere and its resulting chemical structures are still not fully understood. In our previous work, we have investigated the structure of Titan aerosols analogs (tholin) by NMR and identified hexamethylenetetramine as a dominant small molecule in Titan tholin. Here we report a more complete and definitive structural investigation of the small molecule inventory in Titan tholin. We identified several nitrogenous organic molecules including cyanamide, guanidine, 2-cyanoguanidine, melamine, N′-cyanoformamidine and 1,2,4-triazole in Titan tholin by using NMR and GC–MS and standard sample comparison. The structural characteristics of these molecules suggest a possible formation pathway from the reaction of HCN and NH3, both of which are known to exist in appreciable density in the atmosphere and were tentatively detected by the Huygens probe.