The feasibility of a microfabricated indium-fueled electrospray thruster with excellent performance was demonstrated. High efficiency electrospray thrusters with microfabricated components are under development for very compact, distributable propulsion systems that can be employed on both very small and large spacecraft with 10X improvement over SOA in mass, volume and specific impulse The critical components of this technology are the microfabricated emitter arrays and the capillary force driven indium feed system. Grey scale electron-beam lithography patterning and reactive ion dry etching provided the required micron-scale etch precision and uniformity across an array of 400 emitters in 1 cm2. Initial tests of single microfabricated silicon emitters demonstrated better performance than industry standard single emitters and the performance required to achieve 200 micronewtons when scaled up to a thruster with 400 emitters in 1 cm2. Arrays of emitters tested in a preliminary prototype Microfluidic Electrospray Propulsion (MEP) thruster assembly demonstrated stable performance at estimated thrust levels of 5, 50, and 120 µN at extraction voltages less than 4 kV. Current stability was within 0.15 % at 120 µN with only 1.5% of the emitter current collected by the extractor electrode. Post-test inspections revealed that more than 99% of the 400 emitters were electrospraying during the test. Specific impulse was estimated to be >3100 s from measurements of total charge and consumed indium mass at an emitter voltage of 1470 V. The results of this investigation suggest that microfabricated indium electrospray thruster technology is both feasible and capable of excellent performance as a highly compact microthruster.


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    Titel :

    Electrospray Thruster Performance with Microfabricated Emitter Arrays and Indium Propellant


    Beteiligte:
    Marrese-Reading, Colleen M. (Autor:in) / Anderson, John (Autor:in) / Jung-Kubiak, Cecile (Autor:in) / Polk, James (Autor:in) / Singh, Vritika (Autor:in) / Yee, Karl (Autor:in) / White, Victor (Autor:in) / Wilson, Dan (Autor:in) / Bruneau, Peter (Autor:in) / Rouhi, Nima (Autor:in)

    Kongress:

    AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference ; 2016 ; Salt Lake City, UT, United States


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2016-07-25


    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Konferenz)


    Format :

    Keine Angabe


    Sprache :

    Englisch


    Schlagwörter :



    MICROFLUIDIC ELECTROSPRAY PROPULSION(MEP) THRUSTER PERFORMANCE WITH MICROFABRICATED EMITTER ARRAYS FOR INDIUM PROPELLANT (AIAA 2016-4738)

    Marrese-Reading, Colleen M. / Anderson, John / Jung-Kubiak, Cecile et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2016



    Electrospray Performance of Microfabricated Colloid Thruster Arrays

    Matthew Alexander / John Stark / Katharine Smith et al. | AIAA | 2006


    A Fully Microfabricated Externally Wetted Electrospray Thruster

    Gassend, Blaise / Velasquez-Garcia, Luis / Akinwande, Akintunde et al. | AIAA | 2007