• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.14-21
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• 2010

Ion thruster is a kind of electrostatic thruster that use electrostatic field in order to accelerate ionized propellant. Ion thruster have characteristics of small thrust but very high specific impulse among the electric thrusters. High specific impulse can reduce propellant consumption significantly. So, ion thruster have advantage for long time and long distance mission. Recently, plans for space exploration is increasing gradually not only at traditional forward countries for space like USA, Russia and Europe, but also other countries like Japan, China and India. Exploration for superior planets and asteroids the propellant ratio can go up to about 99% when chemical propulsion is used as a cruising thruster. Therefore, latest space exploration vehicles use the ion thruster as main thruster for del-V burn and use monopropellant thrusters for attitude control. In this paper, the development process of preliminary ECR ion thruster and the ECR discharge test results will be presented.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2004.03a
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• pp.262-270
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• 2004

Basic experiments were carried out using the THT-IV low-power Hall thruster to examine the influences of magnetic field shape and strength, and acceleration channel length on thruster performance and to establish guidelines for design of high-performance Hall thrusters. Thrusts were measured with varying magnetic field and channel structure. Exhaust plasma diagnostic measurement was also made to evaluate plume divergent angles and voltage utilization efficiencies. Ion current spatial profiles were measured with a Faraday cup, and ion energy distribution functions were estimated from data with a retarding potential analyzer. The thruster was stably operated with a highest performance under an optimum acceleration channel length of 20 mm and an optimum magnetic field with a maximum strength of about 150 Gauss near the channel exit and with some shape considering ion acceleration directions. Accordingly, an optimum magnetic field and channel structure is considered to exist under an operational condition, related to inner physical phenomena of plasma production, ion acceleration and exhaust plasma feature. A new Hall thruster was designed with basic research data of the THT-IV thruster. With the thruster with many considerations, long stable operations were achieved. In all experiments at 200-400 V with 1.5-3 mg/s, the thrust and the specific impulse ranged from 15 to 70 mN and from 1100 to 2300 see, respectively, in a low electric power range of 300~1300 W. The thrust efficiency reached 55 %. Hence, a large map of the thruster performance was successfully made. The thermal characteristics were also examined with data of both measured and calculated temperatures in the thruster body. Thermally safe conditions were achieved with all input powers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2000.02a
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• pp.60-60
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• 2000

The adhesion interface formation between copper and poly(ethylene terephthalate)(PET), poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA) and Polyimide films was treated using Ion assisted reaction system to sequential sputter deposition by High-Frequency ion source. The ion beam modification system used a new type of low power HF ion thruster for space application as new low thruster electric propulsion system. Low power HF ion thruster with diameter 100mm gives the opportunity to obtain beams of Ar+ with currents 20~150 mA (current density 0.5~3.5 mA/cm2) and energy 200~2500eV at HF power level 10~150 W. Using Ar as a working gas it is possible to obtain thrust within 3~8 mN. Contact angles for untreated films were over 95$^{\circ}$ and 80 for Pet, 10o for PMMA and 12o for PI samples as a condition of ion assisted reaction at the ion dose of 10$\times$1016 ions/cm2, the ion beam potential of 1.2 keV and 4 ml/min for environmental gas flow rate. 900o peel tests yielded values of 15 to 35 for PET, 18 to 40 and 12 to 36 g/min. respectively. High resolution X-ray photoelectron spectrocopy is the Cls region for Cu metal on these polymer substrates showed increases in C=O-O groups for polymide, whereas PET and PMMA treated samples showed only C=O groups with increase the ion dose. Finally, unstable polymer surface can be changed from hydrophobic to hydrophilic formation such as C-O and C=O that were confirmed by the XPS analysis, conclusionally, the ion assisted reaction is very effective tools to attach reactive ion species to form functional groups on C-C bond chains of PET, PMMA and PI.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.48 no.8
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• pp.611-620
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• 2020

The effect of discharge voltage on electron mean energy, electric potential, ionization rate, neutral and ion density of Hall thruster was analyzed using a two-dimensional axisymmetric hybrid model. The results of the code developed for this study such as discharge current, thrust, and plasma distribution according to discharge voltage of SPT-100ML Hall thruster were compared by experiments and calculations of other researchers for validation. The results show that the electron mean energy, the ionization rate, and the ion density are increased while the neutral density is decreased as the discharge voltage is increased. The thrust and the discharge current are proportional to the discharge voltage.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.195-200
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• 2011

A low power Hall thruster is under development for orbit maintenance of a small Earth observing satellite. Both cylindrical and annular type thrusters were manufactured and tested to characterize the performance of cylindrical Hall thrusters. Results were described through comparative analyses. Cylindrical thrusters were manufactured in two different channel diameter dimensions, 28 mm and 50 mm. Thrust, ion velocity and ion current were measured in various operating conditions. The results show that cylindrical thrusters are more efficient in mass utilization and voltage utilization, but less efficient in current utilization than annular one.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.361-369
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• 2005

InP(100) crystal surface was irradiated by ion beams with low energy $(180\~225\;eV)$ and high flux $(\~10^{15}/cm^2/s)$, Self-organization process induced by ion beam was investigated by examining nano structures formed during ion beam sputtering. As an ion source, an electrostatic closed electron Hall drift thruster with a broad beam size was used. While the incident angle $(\theta)$, ion flux (J), and ion fluence $(\phi)$ were changed and InP crystal was rotated, cone-like, ripple, and anistropic nanostrucuture formed on the surface were analyzed by an atomic force microscope. The wavelength of the ripple is about 40 nm smaller than ever reported values and depends on the ion flux as $\lambda{\propto}J^{-1/2}$, which is coincident with the B-H model. As the incident angle is varied, the root mean square of the surface roughness slightly increases up to the critical angle but suddenly decreases due to the decrease of sputtering yield. By the rotation of the sample, the formation of nano dots with the size of $95\~260\;nm$ is clearly observed.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.382-387
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• 2005

Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) surface was irradiated and became superhydrophilic by low energy (180 eV) and high flux $(\~10^{15}/cm{\cdot}s)$ ion beam. As an ion source, a closed electron Hall drift thruster of $\phi=70mm$ outer channel size without grid was adopted. Ar, $O_2$ and $N_2O$ were used for source gases. When $N_2O^+$ and $O_2^+$ reactive gas ion beam were irradiated with the ion fluence of $5\times10^{15}/cm^2$, the wetting angle for deionized water was drastically dropped from $61^{\circ}\;to\;4^{\circ}\;and\;2^{\circ}$, respectively. Surface energy was also increased up to from 44 mN/m to 81 mN/m. Change of chemical component in PVDF surface was analyzed by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Such a great increase of the surface energy was intimately related with the increase of hydrophilic group component in reactive ion irradiated PVDF surfaces. By using an atomic force microscopy, the root-mean-square of surface roughness of ion irradiated PVDF was not much altered compared to that of pristine PVDF.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.602-605
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• 2008

The anode sheath structure in the hollow anode of an anode-layer type Hall thruster was numerically computed using a fully kinetic 2D3V Particle-in-Cell and Direct Simulation Monte Carlo(PIC-DSMC) code. By treating both ions and electrons as particles, anode surface region, which is electrically non-neutral, was analyzed. In order to analyze in detail, the calculation code was parallelized using Message Passing Interface (MPI). The code successfully simulated the discharge current oscillation. In the low magnetic induction case, ion sheath appears in the anode surface because ionization is enough to maintain the plasma occurs in the anode hollow. As the magnetic induction increases, main ionization region move to outside of the anode. At the same time, anode sheath voltage decreases. In the high magnetic induction case, electron sheath appears on the anode surface periodically because the ionization occurs mainly in the discharge channel. This anode sheath condition shift can be explained using the simple sheath model.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.175-180
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• 2009

In this article, we fabricated polytetrafluoroethylene(PTFE) nozzle treated by ion beam, in order to fabricate polymer based electrospray micro thruster with super hydrophobic nozzle. To obtain the super hydrophobic surface, PTFE surface is treated by argon and oxygen plasma treatment process. The optimal condition is investigated argon and oxygen flow rate as well as the paalied energy level for the treatment process. Fabricated nozzle was evaluated by measuring contact angle, and the surface morphology was examined by using scanning electron microscope(SEM) and atomic force microscope(AFM). We observe that jetting becomes more stable and repeatable on the treated nozzle. And to evaluate performance of fabricated nozzle, we measure micro scale thrust using a cantilever and a nozzle treated by ion beam laser displacement sensor.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.1-11
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• 2021

To develop technologies for the stable operation of electric propulsion systems, the exhaust plume behavior of electric thrusters was studied using PIC-DSMC(particle-in-cell and direct simulation Monte Carlo). For the numerical analysis, the Simple Electron Fluid Model using Boltzmann relation was employed, and the charge and momentum exchanges due to atom-ion collisions were considered. The results of this study agreed with the plasma potentials measured experimentally. Near the thruster exit, active collisions among particles and charge exchanges created slow ions and fast atoms, which were expected to significantly affect the trajectory and velocity of the thruster exhaust plume.