Enhanced Performance of Cylindrical Hall Thrusters
Authors: Y. Raitses, A. Smirnov, and N.J. Fisch
Abstract:
The cylindrical thruster differs significantly in its underlying physical mechanisms from the conventional annular Hall thruster. It features high ionization efficiency, quiet operation, ion acceleration in a large volume-to-surface ratio channel, and performance comparable with the state-of-the-art conventional Hall thrusters. Very significant plume narrowing, accompanied by the increase of the energetic ion fraction and improvement of ion focusing, led to 50%–60% increase of the thruster anode efficiency. These improvements were achieved by overrunning the discharge current in the magnetized thruster plasma.
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Applied Physics Letters 90, 221502 (2007) 3 pages
doi: 10.1063/1.2741413
© (2007) American Institute of Physics.
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