It has been urgently required to develop ionic liquid electrospray thruster (ILET) for rapidly expanding micro-/nanosatellites. In this work, ILETs with high-density array emitters are fabricated to quantitatively study the electrospray emission process of three typical ionic liquids (ILs). Onset voltage, current, voltage–current characteristics, and ratio of positive to negative currents are analyzed, and the effect of the properties of ILs on ILET is revealed. The onset voltage of the ILET is measured to be as low as 740 V, and the collected current is up to $100\mu \mathrm{A}$. The results show that the viscosity of ILs has a great influence on the onset voltage and the emitted current. The inconsistency between theoretical and experimental results for the onset voltage of different ILs is explained in detail. Taking viscous stress into account, the estimated results agree well with the experimental ones. The analysis shows that the dynamic effect will be significant when the viscosity is high. In addition, the voltage–current characteristics and the ratio of positive to negative current are studied. The research is valuable to get insight into generative mechanism of IL electrospray and to provide a better design of both ILs and ILET.

迫切需要开发离子液体电喷雾推进器 (ILET) 以快速扩展微/纳米卫星。在这项工作中，制造了具有高密度阵列发射器的 ILET，以定量研究三种典型离子液体 (IL) 的电喷雾发射过程。分析了起始电压、电流、电压-电流特性和正负电流比，并揭示了 ILs 特性对 ILET 的影响。ILET的起始电压实测低至740 V，采集电流高达$100\mu \mathrm{一种}$. 结果表明，ILs的粘度对起始电压和发射电流有很大影响。详细解释了不同 IL 起始电压的理论和实验结果之间的不一致。考虑到粘性应力，估计结果与实验结果吻合良好。分析表明，当粘度较高时，动力效应会显着。此外，还研究了电压-电流特性和正负电流比。该研究对于深入了解 IL 电喷雾的生成机制并提供更好的 IL 和 ILET 设计很有价值。