Abstract
High-precision ionic liquid electrospray thrusters (ILETs) can be used for space exploration missions such as orbital control, attitude adjustment or drag-free control. A micro-newton thrust can be generated by the emitter, which is the most critical part of the thruster. The study was conducted on an ionic liquid electrospray thruster with active propellant feed subsystems. In order to investigate the effect of emitter tip shape on the emission properties of the thruster, four types of emitters have been proposed and fabricated, namely flat emitter, unilateral emitter, bilateral emitter, and tapered emitter. It is found that the basic current modes of the four emitters are similar, but the magnitude of voltages for current mode transitions are different. The voltages of current mode transitions under the unilateral emitter are significantly larger than those of the other three kinds of emitters. Furthermore, the processes to establish and cease emission of ILETs with capillary emitters were first studied based on startup delay and end-up delay. Mathematical models were established to calculate the startup delay and end-up delay of the four emitters. The calculated results agree well with the experiments over 95 % by creatively adding a shape coefficient in the models. Finally, the stable emission regions based on beam currents and current noises of the four emitters were analyzed and demonstrated. As a result, the tapered emitter has the largest stable emission region, while the unilateral has the advantage of maintaining steady emission at extremely low flow rate and voltage. Overall, the emission performance of the tapered emitter is the best, while the bilateral emitter is slightly inferior, both significantly superior to the other two kinds of emitters. However, the bilateral emitter with a uniform profile could be produced in large quantities quickly and cheaply, which is suitable for upcoming massive space exploration missions.
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