Uniform needle-emitter arrays for ionic liquid electrospray thrusters with precise thrust control
Abstract The development of ionic liquid electrospray thrusters with highly precise needle-emitter arrays is reported. Micro-electro-mechanical systems process technology is applied in the fabrication process of needle-emitter arrays to achieve a uniform shape of emitter tips. The resulting emitter-...
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Published in | Japanese Journal of Applied Physics Vol. 60; no. SC; p. SCCL06 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Tokyo
IOP Publishing
01.06.2021
Japanese Journal of Applied Physics |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Abstract
The development of ionic liquid electrospray thrusters with highly precise needle-emitter arrays is reported. Micro-electro-mechanical systems process technology is applied in the fabrication process of needle-emitter arrays to achieve a uniform shape of emitter tips. The resulting emitter-array chips were then tested to gather the current–voltage characteristics of emitter arrays with different numbers of emitters. The maximum ion current extracted from the emitters increased almost in proportion with the number of emitters. When the current–voltage curves of 81-, 169-, and 361-emitter chips were compared with a constant gap distance between the emitter and extractor electrodes, the onset voltage of ion emission was nearly constant because the emitter tips on all the chips were uniform in shape. Moreover, the current–voltage curves had similar slopes for the different number of emitters after the onset voltage, which demonstrates the uniform ion current output of all the emitter arrays. |
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Bibliography: | JJAP-S1102069.R1 |
ISSN: | 0021-4922 1347-4065 |
DOI: | 10.35848/1347-4065/abe997 |