Investigation Of Solid Propellant Microthrusters

Abstract

A novel micropropulsion system is described for high-accuracy station keeping, attitude control and speed adjusting of microspacecraft. The proposed solid propellant microthruster is composed of two layers bonded together. One layer is a silicon layer, which contains a microchamber, a micronozzle and a 30-micron slot. The specific solid propellant is loaded in the microhamber for combustion. The convergent-divergent micronozzle is used to accelerate the combustion gas to produce thrust. The slot is employed to insert the special ignition wire to ignite the solid propellant. The other layer is a glass layer, which is bonded onto the silicon layer to form 3-D microthruster. Numerical investigations have been carried out before the fabrication. The thrust ranging from 1 mN to 10 mN is produced depending of on different geometries. Single microthrusters and microthruster layers have been fabricated successfully using MEMS technologies.