Time taken for plasma deposition (sputtering) to grow (remove) a monolayer, τ_mono (Eq. (25)), asa function of atmospheric gas pressure, p_gas . We note that p_gas acts as a proxy for atmospheric height and in general does not reflect the true local pressure. τ_mono is shown for an electron temperature T_e = 1 eV and degrees of ionisation f_e = 10⁻⁷ (dash), 10⁻⁴ (dot) and 1 (dot-dash). The light blue bands shows the effect of varying the electron temperature from T_e = T_gas (upper boundary) to T_e = 10 eV (lowerboundary), for each degree of ionisation. In this paper f_e is treated as a parameter and is varied, from the values calculated in DRIFT-PHOENIX, to incorporate expected values from various non-thermal ionisation processes beyond thermal ionisation. As a consequence, as the number density of the electrons, ions and neutral particles change, the local gas pressure will change and deviate from its original DRIFT-PHOENIX calculated value. Therefore, the atmospheric pressure in the plots presented here act as a proxy for atmospheric height and in general doesn’t reflect the true local pressure. For comparison, also plotted is the time taken to grow or remove a monolayer of material through neutral gas-phase surface chemistry using DRIFT-PHOENIX: , where the total net growth of the dust grain is |χ^net |, for the example atmospheres (Fig. 1) given by T_eff = 2400 K, log g = 5.0 (cyan); T_eff = 2400 K, log g = 3.0 (magenta); T_eff = 1500 K, log g = 5.0 (green); and T_eff = 1500 K, log g = 3.0 (red). At high atmospheric pressures the numerical jitter in corresponds to transitions between growth rates (χ^net > 0) and evaporation rates (χ^net < 0).