Development and Testing of a Field-Emission Neutraliser for Micro-electric Propulsion

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Persistent URL	http://purl.org/net/epubs/work/41404
Record Status	Checked
Record Id	41404
Title	Development and Testing of a Field-Emission Neutraliser for Micro-electric Propulsion
Contributors	P-E Frigot (AOES BV), KL Aplin (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab.), BJ Kent (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab.), D Nicolini (European Space Agency), JAG Del Amo (European Space Agency)
Abstract	The work reported was carried out through a European Space Agency contract in the frame of LISA/Pathfinder with the Rutherford Appleton laboratory for the design, development and manufacturing of a field-emission neutralizer intended for use with micro-electric propulsion systems. The fabrication process is briefly described and the device characteristics for a neutralizer are outlined. Results from experimental activities performed at ESA are presented. The neutralizer assembly has been operated for short period of time in constant-current mode at levels ranging from 100μA to 1mA with accuracy better than 0.1%. A predicted power consumption of 0.2 W/mA has been verified. Unstable behavior of the emission properties over time has been observed. Temperature sensitivity has been identified and characterized, although it was found not to be the cause of those instabilities.
Organisation	CCLRC , SSTD
Keywords	Physics , Engineering , field emission , ion thruster , micropropulsion , neutralization
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Language	English (EN)

Type	Details	URI(s)	Local file(s)	Year
Paper In Conference Proceedings	In Proc. 30th International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC 2007), Florence, Italy, 17-20 September 2007, (2007).		Frigot_etal07.pdf	2007