Low Power Cylindrical Hall Thruster with Magnetic Field Tailoring

Abstract

Tailoring of magnetic field has been performed for a class of cylindrical Hall thrusters (CHTs) in the range of 200–500 W, which have retracted inner iron core in their discharge channel. The aim of the magnetic field tailoring is to reduce interaction between plasma and channel wall to minimize secondary electron emission, ion loss, surface erosion, etc. For CHTs with magnetic field tailoring, the overall operation range is 0.5–1.7 A of the discharge current and 150–350 V of the discharge voltage. At 300 V of the anode voltage, the propellant efficiency and the ion current are approximately 160% and 0.82 A, respectively. Multiply charged ions including Xe4+ and Xe5+ ions are observed, and the sum of the multicharge ion fractions is larger than 50%. In comparison, for CHT without magnetic field tailoring, the propellant efficiency, ion current, and sum of the multiply charged ion fractions are 124%, 0.64 A, and 46%, respectively, which demonstrate better performance of the magnetic field tailored thruster.