Publications by Renato Krpoun | EPFL Graph Search

Micromachined electrospray thrusters for spacecraft propulsion

Micromachining has enabled the downscaling of large, massive and power hungry systems into small batch-produced integrated devices. Recent progress in electrospray thruster technology, in particular the discovery of an ionic emission mode using the ionic l ...

EPFL2009

Integrated out-of-plane nanoelectrospray thruster arrays for spacecraft propulsion

Herbert Shea, Renato Krpoun

Nanoelectrosprays, well known for their use in sample injection for the mass spectrometry of large biomolecules, can also be used in other applications such as spacecraft propulsion. The thrust generated by a single electrospray emitter is well below 1 μN, ...

Institute of Physics2009

Tailoring the hydraulic impedance of out-of-plane micromachined electrospray sources with integrated electrodes

Herbert Shea, Renato Krpoun

Hydraulic impedance is a critical parameter for the operation of electrospray emitters, and for preventing flooding when spraying from arrays of emitters. Controlling flow rate by tuning the flow impedance allows accessing different operating modes, such a ...

American Institute of Physics2009

A method to determine the onset voltage of single and arrays of electrospray emitters

Herbert Shea, Renato Krpoun

This paper reports on an accurate and rapid method to compute the onset voltage for a single or for an array of electrospray emitters with complex geometries and on the correlation of the simulation with experimental data. This method permits the exact det ...

American Institute of Physics2008

Onset Voltage Modeling of Micromachined Colloid Thrusters

Herbert Shea, Renato Krpoun

The onset voltage of a colloid thruster is an important parameter in the design of micromachined thrusters. Because dimensions in MEMS thrusters are in the range of several tens of micrometers and because extractor electrodes can be only 5 μm from the capi ...

2008

Method and apparatus to determine a planet vector

Edoardo Charbon, Herbert Shea, Renato Krpoun, Noémy Scheidegger

The present invention relates to a method for a low cost Planet vector Sensor based on imaging atmospheric oxygen emission at 762 nm or at 557.7 wavelengths using either CMOS, CCD or arrays of single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs). In both daytime and nig ...

2008

A new concept for a low-cost Earth sensor: Imaging oxygen airglow with arrays of single photon detectors

Edoardo Charbon, Herbert Shea, Cristiano Niclass, Renato Krpoun, Noémy Scheidegger

This paper presents a novel concept for a compact low-cost Earth sensor based on imaging atmospheric oxygen emission at 762nm using arrays of single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs). In both nighttime and daytime there is continuous emission at 762nm due to ...

2007

Micromachined electric propulsion using ionic liquids as fuel

Herbert Shea, Renato Krpoun

MEMS-based electric propulsion (EP) presents several advantages over conventional EP approaches, including scalability, redundancy, fine thrust control, low thrust noise, and reduced operation voltage. Small spacecraft (1- 100 kg) in particular stand to be ...

2007

Integrated electrospray micropropulsion system

Herbert Shea, Renato Krpoun

2007