Multierosion Contaminants Real-Time Monitoring in Krypton Hall Thruster Using Emission Spectroscopy

For high-power long-lifetime Hall thrusters, the effects of vacuum system contaminants and component erosion products generated during ground testing are becoming increasingly nonnegligible. Traditional long-time wearing tests are proving inadequate for ground-testing requirements. There is an urgent need to develop rapid optimization and efficient evaluation techniques. This study investigates a krypton (Kr) Hall thruster, employing emission spectroscopy for real-time monitoring of multicomponent erosion contaminants, including vacuum system contaminations and thruster component erosion products. For quantitative analysis of inner magnetic pole erosion, a composite line actinometry was developed for carbon, with preliminary analysis of magnetic field effects on erosion. The results demonstrate successful real-time monitoring of boron, silicon, carbon, tungsten, and chromium via emission spectroscopy. The carbon spectral quantification model revealed three distinct magnetic field influence modes on inner magnetic pole erosion and identified a sharp erosion reduction with increasing anode voltage. This work validates emission spectroscopy as a viable real-time monitoring tool for vacuum contaminants and thruster erosion products, offering a rapid evaluation method for long-life thruster design and providing experimental data to advance erosion-sputtering theory.