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Temporally resolved measurement of a force induced by a pulsed water-fuelled magnetron sputtering source

Part of: Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2024

Sota Shimizu  and
Kazunori Takahashi Open the ORCID record for Kazunori Takahashi [Opens in a new window]
Sota Shimizu
Affiliation:
Department of Electrical Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan
Kazunori Takahashi*
Affiliation:
Department of Electrical Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan National Institute for Fusion Science, Toki 509-5292, Japan
*
†Email address for correspondence: kazunori.takahashi.e8@tohoku.ac.jp
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Abstract

A high-speed solenoid-type pulsed valve is applied to a water-fuelled magnetron sputtering thruster, which can lead a compact and neutralizer-free electric propulsion device by generating a thrust due to the ejection of the sputtered target material, in order to minimize the size of the gas feeding system. The pulsed valve is opened for approximately 5 msec and the gaseous water is introduced into the source via a gas line connected to the source. A dc high voltage is firstly applied between the cathode and the anode; then the discharge is sustained for the period in which a gas pressure enough for the discharge is maintained and a change in the discharge mode is observed during the discharge pulse. To investigate the impact of the mode change on the thrust generation, a temporally resolved measurement of the force is equivalently performed by installing a pulsed voltage power supply and by changing the pulse width of the discharge voltage. The results show the temporal reduction of the thrust-to-power ratio during a pulsed discharge due to the nonlinear correlation between ion energy and sputtering yield. It is suggested that the use of a pulsed valve would be useful for downsizing of the electric propulsion system, while an optimization to properly control the gas flow rate is needed for further development.

Keywords

magnetron sputteringwater plasmaelectric propulsion
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 90 , Issue 2 , April 2024 , 975900205
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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