Hollow cathodes serve as electron sources for the operation of electric thrusters aboard spacecraft. Conventionally, hollow cathodes utilize a heating element to raise the temperature of the electron emitting material embedded in the cathode. To simplify cathode design and operation, in recent years, heaterless cathode technology has been under development in various facilities around the world. This paper overviews the development of a low current heaterless hollow cathode, designed and produced by Rafael, and denoted the ARC-1A. The ARC-1A generates a discharge current of 0.3-1.2 A and is ignited using breakdown voltages below 400 V. Each of the development phases is elaborated upon. These phases included activities such as a technology study, the development of manufacturing processes, the study of failure modes, and performance characterization and culminated with two primary tests-a 5000 h endurance test and a 3500 cold ignition cycles test. In its current state of development, the ARC-1A proves suitable for a wide range of low power electric thrusters and was successfully coupled with two different Hall effect thrusters in a wide range of low discharge current levels (0.5-1.1 A).

中文翻译：

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用于等离子体推进的低电流无加热器空心阴极中和器——发展概况

空心阴极用作航天器上电动推进器操作的电子源。通常，空心阴极利用加热元件来升高嵌入阴极中的电子发射材料的温度。为了简化阴极设计和操作，近年来，世界各地的各种设施都在开发无加热器阴极技术。本文概述了由 Rafael 设计和生产的低电流无加热器空心阴极的发展，并表示为 ARC-1A。ARC-1A 产生 0.3-1.2 A 的放电电流，并使用低于 400 V 的击穿电压点燃。详细阐述了每个开发阶段。这些阶段包括技术研究、制造工艺开发、失效模式研究、和性能表征，并通过两项主要测试达到高潮——5000 小时耐久测试和 3500 次冷点火循环测试。在目前的发展状态下，ARC-1A 被证明适用于各种低功率电动推进器，并成功地与两种不同的霍尔效应推进器结合使用，具有广泛的低放电电流水平 (0.5-1.1 A)。