## 1 Introduction  
A dusty plasma comprises a partially ionized gaseous medium containing electrically charged solid dust particles, of which the size can typically range between a few nanometers and several micrometers [1; 2]. Typical examples of dusty plasmas can be found both in astrophysics [3; 4] and in industrial applications [5]. In the field of astrophysics, one can find dusty plasmas in the rings of Saturn [6; 7; 8], around Jupiter [9; 10], and in the form of accretion disks [11]. In industrial applications, dust particles in plasma applications are often seen as a form of contamination [12]. For example, in photolithography machines, the presence of small dust particles in vulnerable places in the machine can lead to a drastic decrease in the microchip quality [13]. Therefore, the physics behind the release of (nano) particles from surfaces is a widely researched topic [14; 15]. These applications formed the spark for investigating dusty plasmas in laboratory environments [1; 16]. As dust particles in a plasma behave as electrostatically floating bodies, they will attain charge from the plasma. Generally, dust particles tend to charge negatively since the electron mobility is much higher than the ion mobility [2], which implies that the electron current towards the particle initially outweighs the ion current until an equilibrium between these currents is reached for a certain negative particle surface potential. This interplay between the dust particles and the plasma gives rise to a broad range of physical phenomena; strongly coupled (plasma-dust and dust-dust) interactions manifest in the form of crystallization [17], phase transitions [18], chain formation [19; 20], or self-excited dust density waves [21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26]. In all of these phenomena, the dust charge plays a major role. The charge of micrometer sized dust particles has been measured using particle resonance methods [27; 28] or by applying external electric fields [29; 30]. For nanodusty plasmas, the dust charge density can for instance be estimated using laser-induced photodetachment (LIP) [31]. Apart from the charge, the dust particle size is a relevant parameter, especially in the case of nanodusty plasmas. In this type of dusty plasmas, dust particles are chemically grown in the plasma by means of admixing a reactive precursor gas with a noble background gas. For this, organic precursors (such as acetylene (C\({}_{2}\)H\({}_{2}\)) [32] or methane (CH\({}_{4}\)) [33; 34]), silicon-based [35], or organosilicon precursor gases [36; 37] are often used. Such precursor gases easily dissociate into fragments, after which these fragments efficiently polymerize into larger species. In a nanodusty plasma, generally the growth can qualitatively be described in three distinct phases [38; 39]. During the (i) nucleation phase, the plasma chemistry dictates the growth of protoparticles of only a few nanometers in size, which can be charged either positively, negatively, or neutrally. Once a critical density of protoparticles has been reached, the (ii) coagulation phase begins, during which the particles will rapidly coalesce. This phase is suddenly terminated by Coulombic repulsion, as the particles attain a permanently negative charge with increasing size [38; 40]. From this point on, dust particle growth happens by means of (iii) accretion or surface growth, which is characterized by the collection of positive ions and radicals from the plasma. As the dust particles grow in size, the magnitude of the (outward pointing) ion drag force increases faster than the (inward pointing) electrostatic force, which causes the growing dust particles to drift outwards. Once the center of the discharge is sufficiently dust-free, a subsequent growth cycle can start. In the field, much work has been devoted to modeling, ranging from detailed chemistries [41; 42; 43; 44; 45] to (discrete) sectional models for particle growth [46; 47; 48].