Improved ion containment using a ring-cusp ion thruster

Abstract

A 30-centimeter diameter ring-cusp ion thruster is described which operates at inert gas ion beam currents up to about 7 ampere, with significant improvements in discharge chamber performance over conventional divergent-field thrusters. The thruster has strong boundary ring-cusp magnetic fields, a diverging field on the cathode region, and a nearly field-free volume upstream of the ion extraction system. Minimum ion beam production costs of 90 to 100 watts per beam ampere (W/A) were obtained for argon, krypton and xenon. Propellant efficiencies in excess of 0.90 were achieved at 100 to 120 W/A for the three inert gases. The ion beam charge-state was documented with a collimating mass spectrometer probe to allow evaluation of overall thruster efficiencies.