Planet formation in chemically diverse and evolving discs: I. Composition of planetary building blocks

Protoplanetary discs are dynamic environments where the interplay between chemical processes and mass transport shapes the composition of gas and dust available for planet formation. We investigate the combined effects of volatile chemistry (including both gas-phase and surface reactions), viscous gas evolution, and radial dust drift on the composition of planetary building blocks. We explore scenarios of chemical inheritance and reset under varying ionisation conditions and dust grain sizes in the submillimetre regime. We simulated the disc evolution using a semi-analytical 1D model that integrates chemical kinetics with gas and dust transport, accounting for viscous heating, turbulent mixing, and refractory organic carbon erosion. We find that mass transport plays a role in the chemical evolution of even sub-μm grains, especially in discs that have experienced strong heating or are exposed to relatively high levels of ionising radiation. The radial drift of relatively small (~100 μm) icy grains can yield significant volatile enrichment in the gas phase within the snowlines, increasing the abundances of species like H2O, CO2, and NH3 by up to an order of magnitude. Early planetesimal formation can lead to volatile depletion in the inner disc on timescales shorter than 0.5 Myr, while the erosion of refractory organic carbon can lead to markedly superstellar gas-phase C/O and C/N ratios. Notably, none of the analysed scenarios were able to reproduce the classical monotonic radial trend of the gas-phase C/O ratio predicted by early models. Our results also show that a pairwise comparison of elemental ratios, in the context of the host star’s composition, is key to isolating signatures of different scenarios in specific regions of the disc. We conclude that accurate models of planet formation must concurrently account for the chemical and dynamical evolution of discs, as well as the possible diversity of their initial chemical and physical conditions.