DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF MICRONOZZLES

Abstract

Micronozzle, a key component in micropropulsion system, has been designed and fabricated. Quasi 1D inviscid theory was used in designing a series of conical micronozzles of different expander half-angles (10°-50°). Aerospike micronozzle, a promising candidate to achieve high performance propulsion system, was designed with Angelino method (or Approximate method). Both micronozzles were fabricated using soft lithography, an inexpensive and relatively simple technique comparing to well-established deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) technique, with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as structural material. Micronozzles with two different nozzle throat width, 53.5µm and 107µm, were fabricated for comparison. Microscopic inspections reveal 107µm is the more producible nozzle throat width with current equipments. The PDMS-based micronozzle can be used as cold gas microthruster system for micro- and nanosatellites.