Titanium Optics for Ion Thrusters

Ion thruster total impulse capability is limited, in part, by accelerator grid sputter erosion. A development effort was initiated to identify a material with a lower accelerator grid volumetric sputter erosion rate than molybdenum, but that could utilize the present NSTAR thruster grid design and fabrication techniques to keep development costs low, and perform as well as molybdenum optics. After comparing the sputter erosion rates of several atomic materials to that of molybdenum at accelerator voltages, titanium was found to offer a 45% reduction in volumetric erosion rates. To ensure that screen grid sputter erosion rates are not higher at discharge chamber potentials, titanium and molybdenum sputter erosion rates were measured at these potentials. Preliminary results showed only a slightly higher volumetric erosion rate for titanium, so that screen grid erosion is insignificant. A number of material, thermal, and mechanical properties were also examined to identify any fabrication, launch environment, and thruster operation issues. Several titanium grid sets were successfully fabricated. A titanium grid set was mounted onto an NSTAR 30 cm engineering model ion thruster and tested to determine optics performance. The titanium optics operated successfully over the entire NSTAR power range of 0.5 to 2.3 kW. Differences in impingement-limited perveances and electron backstreaming limits were found to be due to a larger cold gap for the titanium optics. Discharge losses for titanium grids were lower than those for molybdenum, likely due to a slightly larger titanium screen grid open area fraction. Radial distributions of beam current density with titanium optics were very similar to those with molybdenum optics at all power levels. Temporal electron backstreaming limit measurements showed that titanium optics achieved thermal equilibrium faster than molybdenum optics.