微波霍尔推力器表面波等离子体源的实验研究
Experimental Study on the Surface Wave Plasma Used in Microwave Hall Thruster

在微波霍尔推力器中，微波通过窗口耦合到霍尔加速通道，在通道底部介质板附近产生表面波等离子体以抑制振荡。表面波等离子体能否顺利产生将直接影响推力器本身的性能，为此，开展微波霍尔推力器表面波等离子体源的真空实验研究。在不同微波输出功率条件下，分别以氪、氩气为工质，以陶瓷和石英材料为介质板，通过改变流量，得到了表面波等离子体的产生规律。采用朗缪尔探针，实验诊断了介质板附近的表面波等离子体密度。实验结果表明：和陶瓷介质板相比，石英介质板对微波的损耗低，表面波更容易稳定产生；朗缪尔探针的诊断结果表明，石英介质板附近等离子体的电子密度高于对应的临界电子密度，证明本实验等离子体为表面波等离子体。
In microwave Hall thruster, for depressing vibration gas was ionized to form surface wave plasma near the end plate of the annular Hall effect channel by use of microwave energy which was coupled in through wind coupling generation and stabilization of surface wave plasma is important for thruster performance, this made it necessary to perform plasma experiment first. At different microwave output power, taking argon and krypton separately as propellant, making the end plate of quartz and ceramic separately, through changing the mass flow rate, the gas discharge pattern and property was obtained. According to Langmuir probe diagnosing method, the surface wave plasma was also diagnosed. The experiment results demonstrated that plasma was much easier to generate with a quartz plate compared with the ceramic one. The plasma density was much higher than the critical value, which showed that the experimented plasma was belong to the scope of surface wave plasma