A novel method to increase the self-bias voltage in RF-biased ion thrusters

Abstract The RF-biased ion thruster is a promising method for achieving self-neutralization. However, the thruster performance is constrained by the limited self-bias voltage, which tends to degrade due to capacitive coupling between the screen grid and the discharge chamber wall. This paper proposes a novel method to enhance the self-bias voltage by adding a screen grid extension ring between the screen grid and the discharge chamber. Experimental results demonstrate that this method significan