Analysis of ionization characteristics during single discharge of microcathode arc thruster

Abstract

Abstract In this investigation, to monitor the cathodic ionization process of the microcathodic arc thruster, electrical detection was combined with enhanced ICCD spectroscopic detection to diagnose the cathodic ionization characteristics of microcathode arc thrusters with 1 μs time resolution for examining the microsecond-level discharge process. After we used the titanium ion spectroscopy model to calculate the ion density distribution during the cathode ionization of the microcathode arc thruster, we found that the microcathode arc thruster showed a double peak of titanium ions in one cycle. This phenomenon may be related to the combined effect of arc heat transfer and ion current impact on the cathode during the discharge of the microcathode arc thruster. The results showed that changes in the input energy of the power processing unit can effectively affect the temporal relationship between arc power peak and arc current peak, which in turn affects the ionization of the cathode of the microcathode arc thruster.