" IEPC-95-88 FUNDAMENTAL EXPERIMENTS OF C 6 o APPLICATION TO ION THRUSTER

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Nakayama, Yoshinori Takegahara, Haruki
Copyright Year	2008
Abstract	C6o application to the electron bombardment ion thruster was evaluated. This thruster has a discharge chamber body heater, as well as the C6o sublimation crucible heater, to avoid the C60 re-solidification and several design considerations were employed to prevent the re-solidification, fragmentation and multi-ionization caused by the hot filament cathode and the energetic electron bombardment. Using this thruster, it was confirmed that the remarkable improvement of the crucible performance was achieved because the flow rate of the new-designed crucible was 4.9 SCCM (2.6 mg/s), that was comparable to that of the typical ion thruster. Moreover, it was also confirmed that the thrust was 3.4 mN (net acceleration voltage = 700 V), and the improvement of the thruster performance was achieved, compared with performance in the previous work. However, it becomes obvious that the propellant utilization efficiency is still low and the ion production cost is very high. In order to push forward this study, therefore, the improvements of the efficiency and the cost, by the optimization of the discharge voltage and the filament current, and the application of the effective plasma confinement, are necessary.
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Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article