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Utah State University

Graduate Student Publications

Spacecraft charging

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Full-Text Articles in Physics

The Effects Of Surface Modification On Spacecraft Charging Parameters, Amberly Evans Jensen, Jr Dennison Feb 2012

The Effects Of Surface Modification On Spacecraft Charging Parameters, Amberly Evans Jensen, Jr Dennison

Graduate Student Publications

Charging of materials by incident radiation is affected by both environmental and physical conditions. Modifying a material’s physical surface will change its reflection, transmission and absorption of the incident radiation which are integrally related to the accumulation of charge and energy deposition in the material. General arguments for incident and emitted photons, electrons and ions are considered. An optical analysis of the effects of surface modification on spacecraft charging parameters on prototypical polyimide Kapton HNTM and Cu samples is presented. Samples were roughened with abrasive compounds ranging from 0.5 to 10 μm in size, comparable to the range of incident …


Approximation Of Range In Materials As A Function Of Incident Electron Energy, Gregory Wilson, Jr Dennison Jan 2012

Approximation Of Range In Materials As A Function Of Incident Electron Energy, Gregory Wilson, Jr Dennison

Graduate Student Publications

A simple composite analytic expression has been developed to approximate the electron range in materials. The expression is applicable over more than six orders of magnitude in energy (<; 10 eV to >; MeV) and range ( 10-9-10-2 m), with an uncertainty of ≤ 20% for most conducting, semiconducting, and insulating materials. This is accomplished by fitting data from two standard NIST databases [ESTAR for the higher energy range and the electron inelastic mean free path (IMFP) for the lower energies]. In turn, these data have been fit with well-established semiempirical models for range and IMFP that are related to …