Development, fabrication and testing of a 15 CM diameter helicon source

Summary form only given. Helicon sources have many practical uses in electric propulsion and plasma processing, among other things. The high densities that helicon plasma sources generate, around 10¹³ to 10¹⁴ per cm^-3, make them ideal for use as ionization sources in electric propulsion devices such as Hall thrusters. After researching and using wave physics principles, a 15 cm, m=0 wave mode helicon source was designed and fabricated in the Plasma dynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Once the helicon source was built and made operational, density measurements were taken using a RF compensated Langmuir probe and ion energy measurements were taken using an electrostatic energy analyzer. The results of these tests are presented