A Flexible, metallic electrospray emitter with embedded flow homogenizer

This work reports a novel design and batch fabrication method of an electrospray emitter suitable for space propulsion. Our device only involves two-step photolithography and electroplating processes, in sharp contrast to traditional SiO₂/based out-of-plane design and labor-intensive fabrication process. In-plane metallic emitter nozzles with 100 times longer effective nozzle length were fabricated consistently with high aspect ratio post arrays embedded within the nozzle as a flow homogenizer. The novelty of this work lies in that this integrated thruster/actuator provides a compact, reliable propulsion subsystem with the feasibility of thrust vectoring.