Comment on 'The effect of single-particle charge limits on charge distributions in dusty plasmas'

It was recently suggested that the electron affinity may pose an additional upper limit on the charge of a single particle in a plasma, in addition to the electron field emission limit. Here we will, however, show that these two limits both rely on the same physical process and that the limit is only relevant for small particles, because it relies on electron tunneling. Plasma-produced particles of only several nanometres (≤10 nm) in size are actively studied, for example in the application of quantum dots and the implications of the proposed charge limit are certainly significant there. However, care must be taken to extend the results to larger particles, which are also actively studied in the field of dusty plasma physics, where typically the limit can be neglected, as we will also show.