The Emerging Field Trends Erosion-Free Electric Hall Thrusters Systems

Abstract

The Hall-type accelerator with closed Hall current and open (that is unbounded by metal or dielectric) walls was proposed and considered both theoretically and experimentally. The novelty of this accelerator is the use of a virtual parallel surface of the anode and the cathode due to the principle of equipotentialization of magnetic field lines, which allows to avoid sputtering of the cathode surface and preserve the dynamics of accelerated ions. The formation of the actual traction beam should be due to the acceleration of ions with the accumulated positive bulk charge. A two-dimensional hybrid model in cylindrical coordinates is created in the framework of which the possibility of creation a positive space charge at the system axes is shown. It is shown that the ions flow from the hump of electrical potential can lead to the creation of a powerful ion flow, which moves along the symmetry axis in both sides from the center.

Two Stage Plasma Source for Large Scale Beam Generation

“…A typical accelerator with an anode layer is not suitable for such tasks. Previously, we created a source of a cylindrical plasma flow with its two-stage formation [7]. The peculiarity of the source is the ionization of the working gas in the anode layer on the periphery of the beam diameter, the accumulation of space charge in the main part of the volume of the beam formation and the formation of the beam itself by the space charge field.…”