Carbonaceous extraterrestrial matter is observed in a wide variety of astrophysical environments. The spectroscopic signatures revealed a large variety of chemical structure illustrating the rich carbon chemistry that occurs in space. In order to produce laboratory analogues of carbonaceous cosmic dust, a new chemical reactor has been built in the Laboratoire de Photophysique Moléculaire. It is a low pressure flat burner providing flames of premixed hydrocarbon / oxygen gas mixtures, closely following the model system used by the combustion community. In such a device the flame is a one-dimensional chemical reactor that offers a broad range of combustion conditions and sampling which allows production of many and various by-products. In the present work, we have studied: i) the infrared transmission spectra of thin film deposit samples whose nature ranges from strongly aromatic to strongly aliphatic materials; ii) the resonant two-photon photoionisation spectra of gas phase PAHs formed in the flame.