High Performance Insulators for Electric Propulsion Engines

New technology, high performance insulators are critical to improved electric propulsion engine operation and lifetime. Little work has been done on investigating the advances in dielectric materials as they apply to existing and future electric propulsion engine applications. Furthermore, the lack of suitable high temperature insulator materials is preventing the development of very high power, high thrust electric propulsion engines. A Phase I program is proposed to experimentally subject a wide range of existing and new candidate insulator materials to a high temperature, high flux plasma environment for accelerated degradation testing. It is anticipated that the data obtained from the proposed experiments will be the first of its kind available. The demonstration of insulator materials capable of surviving the hostile Phase I test environment will identify specific materials and fabrication techniques to enable a new class of high performance insulators to be developed and rigorously tested during Phase II in an actual electric propulsion engine.