Mitigation of breathing oscillations and focusing of the plume in a segmented electrode wall-less Hall thruster

Simmonds, J.; Raitses, Y.

doi:10.1063/5.0070307

Mitigation of breathing oscillations and focusing of the plume in a segmented electrode wall-less Hall thruster

Journal Article · Mon Nov 22 00:00:00 EST 2021 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0070307· OSTI ID:1889108

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Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States); Princeton University, NJ (United States)
Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)

We report in the absence of the channel walls bounding the plasma, a wall-less Hall thruster is a promising configuration with a potentially longer lifetime and easier scalability than conventional Hall thrusters. Because the ion acceleration takes place in the fringing magnetic field with a strong axial component, the operation of a typical wall-less thruster is characterized by a large beam divergence of the plasma flow, which reduces the thrust. In this work, the addition of a biased segmented electrode to the wall-less thruster is shown to significantly narrow the plasma plume and suppress large amplitude breathing oscillations of the discharge current commonly associated with ionization instability. Both effects result in improvements to the thruster performance. Physical mechanisms responsible for these effects are unclear, but they are apparently associated with the reduction of the electron cross field transport to the anode and a transition in the breathing mode frequency.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-09CH11466

OSTI ID:: 1889108

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1832066

Journal Information:: Applied Physics Letters, Journal Name: Applied Physics Letters Journal Issue: 21 Vol. 119; ISSN 0003-6951

Publisher:: American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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