Evaluation of Plume Divergence and Facility Effects on Far-Field Faraday Probe Current Density Profiles

A Faraday probe with three concentric rings was designed and fabricated to assess the effects of gap width and probe geometry in a systematic study of the Hall thruster plume. The nested Faraday probe consisted of two concentric collector rings and an outer guard ring, which enabled simultaneous current density measurements on the inner and outer collector. Two versions of the outer collector were fabricated to create 0.5 mm or 1.5 mm gaps between the rings. Current density distribution of a Hall thruster ion source were studied at 8, 12, 16, and 20 thruster diameters downstream of the exit plane with four probe configurations at background pressures of 3x10

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