  - We made use of a combination of three models that describe plasma
equilibrium, cluster kinetics and aerosol dynamics in order to investigate
solid carbonaceous dust formation in a DC gas discharge where the carbon source
is provided by a graphite cathode sputtering. This enabled us to determine the
time-evolution of some of the particle characteristics, e., g. total density,
mean-diameter, average-charge as function of the sputtering yield. We showed
that for few minutes discharge duration, the particle density reaches 10 7-10 8
cm-3 , the particle mean diameter is approximately 40 nm and the particle size
distributions are bimodal for all the investigated conditions. We also showed
that the variation of the sputtering yield affects in a quite unexpected way
the interplay between the phenomena involved in the aerosol dynamics.
Basically, larger sputtering yields result in larger density and coagulation
rate on one hand, and in a limited nucleation and surface sticking kinetics on
the other hand.
