Improved Micromachined Vaporizing-Liquid Microthruster

A report describes an improved micromachined vaporizing-liquid microthruster (VLM), now under development as a prototype of thrusters for microspacecraft. This thruster is of the resistojet type: the energy for vaporization and expansion of a propellant liquid is provided through electrical-resistance heating. A typical VLM of prior design, fabricated on a chip, was comparatively bulky and was energy-inefficient because much of the energy that should have gone into heating the propellant was wasted in heating the chip.