Laser Plasma Thrusters

As Fuel for Micro/Nanosatellites Using Laser Plasma Thrusters... 

The designed polymers also have superior properties for applications in the near-IR. The carbon-doped triazene polymer shows higher values of Cm and Isp as compared to a commercial polymer (PVA). The well-defined threshold for the momentum coupling coefficient is an important aspect for the application of polymers in laser plasma thrusters. 

Another more exotic application of the designed polymers is as fuel for laser plasma thrusters. The good performance of the laser polymers is probably due to the exothermic decomposition and the high density of labile triazene groups. This suggests the great potential of material design, even for quite different laser-based applications. 

Doped polymers as fuel for laser plasma thrusters... 

Examples for the second group are polymers as fuel in the micro laser plasma thruster (JJ.LPT), PLD of polymers, matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE), which is a deposition technique that can be used to deposit highly uniform thin films [26], or laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) [27-29], which can be used to produce microstructures by transferring an irradiated area of a target film to an acceptor substrate. The polymer can be the transferred material, or just functions as driving force in the transfer. 

A potential application of polymer laser ablation concerns the propulsion of small satellites (1-10 kg) used in space science [86]. Laser plasma thrusters, LPTs, operating with small, powerful diode lasers emitting in the near-infrared wavelength range (930-980 nm) have been proposed. Polymers intended to serve as fuel for a thruster are required to possess a large momentum coupling coefficient, C, defined by Eq. (9-3) ... 

The well-defined threshold and higher Cm of the triazene polymer is an important feature for the design of a plasma thruster with tape-like polymer fuel, because the optimum incident laser fluence and tape speed are clearly defined. The decreasing values of Cm after the maximum are due to the in-... 

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