An investigation of nafion electrospray emitter tips

Electrospray propulsion development is limited in large part by the materials with which emitters are manufactured. Emitters must transport ionic liquid to their apex and hold a shape which allows menisci to form and emit pure ions. The motivation for this work was to investigate Nafion, a perfluorinated sulfonic acid ionomer, as an alternative to the porous materials currently used for electrospray emitters. A common, repeatable method of manufacturing Nafion single emitter tips and arrays with different mixture ratios of Nafion and EMI BF₄ is developed and refined. This method utilizes 3D printed negatives with tungsten ILIS emitters to produce a master shape for reusable PDMS molds. Thirteen tips were made using the presented method. Defects are categorized and recorded. Three of the tips were also successfully attached to porous carbon substrates, all of which were mixtures. Molds for arrays were also tested, and an array of pure Nafion was made.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Adams, Andrew,S.M.(Andrew C.)Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Paulo C. Lozano.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130179

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/130179