Dust as a Gas Carrier

Dust in space can collect particles from surrounding plasma and transport them over long distances. Release of the implanted particles can then change the mass composition in a particular place of the space. The depth of ion penetration into the dust body strongly depends on an initial mutual energy and differs with ion species as well as with the grain composition. The same holds for diffusion constant of implanted ions (already neutralized) exiting back to the free space. We have used our measurements of the release of Ar ions implanted into glassy carbon dust grains for determination of the diffusion coefficient. Our calculations provide the limits for the amount of gas that can be dissolved in the grain as well as its release rate. We discuss the influence of the dust sputtering and dust temperature on the aforementioned quantities.