The application provides a multi-frequency
microwave excited
plasma electric heat thruster. It aims to solve the problem that the
microwave cannot be effectively absorbed after the critical
plasma electron density under the excitation of a single frequency
microwave source. The thruster adopts a multi-port excitation
system and a
frequency band separation design, and is excited by a discontinuous
microwave power source with different duty cycles, so that the output can be flexibly adjusted, the
plasma density and uniformity in the time dimension of the
discharge process can be accurately controlled, the
waveguide system adopts a
waveguide slot antenna to form a
waveguide slot array, the
energy distribution is adjusted by accurately controlling the slot position, inclination and size, and the microwave energy in the spatial dimension of the thruster is finely adjusted. The design effectively breaks through the microwave
absorption efficiency bottleneck of single frequency excitation, reduces the interference between microwave sources, improves the
coupling efficiency, ensures the effective transmission of microwave energy, further improves the
plasma density and uniformity, and optimizes the overall performance of the thruster.