Large Bradbury–Nielsen Gate Optimized for Electrospray Time of Flight Spectroscopy

Antypas, Robert J.; Sampson, Kevin; Torre, David Leonardo Aguilar de la; Wang, Joseph

doi:10.2514/1.b38502

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…In the bipolar operation mode, our numerical investigations focus on two aspects; one is the study of the movement of ion particles in the neutralization process, the other is the effect of beam spacings on plume characteristics. The operation parameters used in our simulation were taken from the ionic liquid electrospray thruster of the University of Southern California (USC) [46], as shown in table 2. Six simulation cases were tested, which have varying beam spacing and negative ion mass, listed in table 3.…”

Section: Bipolar Operation Modementioning

confidence: 99%

Plume neutralization of an ionic liquid electrospray thruster: better insights from particle-in-cell modelling

Zhang¹,

Cai²,

He³

et al. 2021

Plasma Sources Sci. Technol.

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Ionic liquid electrospray thrusters with high specific impulse, high thrust accuracy and low thrust noise are very promising for space gravitational wave detection missions. The plume which may lead to surface charging of solar panels and sensitive spacecraft components is a great concern for the applications of electrospray thruster. Therefore, this paper investigates the plume neutralization process of the ionic liquid electrospray thruster through fully kinetic Particleincell simulations. The unipolarity operation mode is firstly simulated and compared with the experimental measurements. The bipolar operation mode is analyzed by considering the premixing and the separation of positive and negative ion beams. At the same time, the effect of beam spacing on the plume characteristics is investigated. The results show that the plume neutralization of the ionic liquid electrospray thruster is achieved by the spatial and temporal oscillations of the ion beams. In the horizontal direction, the spatial oscillations are caused by the different mass and hence velocities of positive and negative ions. In the vertical direction, the spatial oscillations are mainly because of the non-zero beam spacing. The temporal oscillations may be related to the charge separation induced by the different mass and hence velocities of positive and negative ions. As the beam spacing increases, the amplitude of the electric potential oscillations changes scarcely in the horizontal direction while increases in the vertical direction. The ion temperature goes up with the beam spacing and the deviation of the temperature of beam ions does not exceed 15 eV in the horizontal direction but exceeds 100 eV in the vertical direction. Moreover, the plume divergence half angle and the beam spacing are positively correlated, suggesting that the ionic electrospray thrusters with positive and negative polarity need to be placed as close as possible in the spacecraft.

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Section: Bipolar Operation Modementioning

confidence: 99%