Impact of exterior electron emission on the self-sustaining margin of hollow cathode discharge

Hollow cathode researches used to focus on the inner cavity or downstream plume, however, rarely on the gap between the throttling orifice plate and the keeper plate (T-K gap), which was found to impact the self-sustaining margin of hollow cathode discharge in this paper. Near the lower margin, the main power deposition and electron emission and ionization regions would migrate from inner cavity and downstream plume to the T-K gap, in which case, the source and destination of each mA current therein matter for the self-sustaining capability. Changing the metal surfaces in the T-K gap with emissive materials proved effective in lowering the lower margin by supplementing auxiliary thermionic emission, compensating electron loss on cold absorbing walls and suppressing discharge oscillations. By doing so, the lower margin of a 4 A hollow cathode was lowered from 1 to 0.1−0.2 A, enabling it to couple with low power Hall thruster without extra keeper current.