Quarzkristall-Mikrowaagen-basierte Untersuchung von Sputtereffekten bei Radiofrequenz-Ionentriebwerken in Raumfahrtanwendungen

Abstract

This master’s thesis was conducted in the electric propulsion group at the Spacecraft Department of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR)) during the course of studies of materials sciences at the University of Göttingen. The work was supervised by Dr. Chris Volkmar from the electric propulsion work group, while academic supervision was done by Prof. Dr. Hans Christian Hofsäss from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Göttingen. The aim was to become acquainted with the issue of sputtering effects of radio-frequency ion thrusters on space applications and setting up an experiment to characterize the sputtering behaviour of an ion beam. Additionally, a computational section aims at estimating these processes. In preparation, the ion beam was characterized both in theory and experiment.