Development and Characterization of Porous-Media Borosilicate Glass Ion Sources for Electrospray Thruster

Abstract

The porous-media based electrospray thruster is a cutting edge micro propulsion technology that can revolutionize the capabilities of NanoSats. This paper reports the design, fabrication, and characterization of a porous-media borosilicate glass electrospray thruster. The picosecond infrared laser processing technique is applied to machine 81 emitters out of porous-media. Performance characteristic experiments are conducted with the thruster passively fed with ionic liquid EMI-BF4. The results reveal that the per emitter can emit up to 1.27μA at 2kV. The corresponding machine method present an opportunity to attain more controllable emitter shapes, which has a positive impact on thruster lifetime and performance improvement.