Characterization and thrust measurements from electrolytic decomposition of ammonium dinitramide (ADN) based liquid monopropellant FLP-103 in MEMS thrusters

Although ammonium dinitramide (ADN) has been targeted as a potential green monopropellant in future space vehicles, its application potential in Micro-electrical–Mechanical System (MEMS) thrusters or microthrusters has been seldom reported in open literature. In this paper, electrolytic decomposition of Ammonium Dinitramide (ADN)-based liquid monopropellant FLP-103 was carried out in an open chamber and MEMS thrusters were fabricated from poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to characterize the power consumption. Two thrust measurement methods were employed to investigate the electrolytic decomposition of FLP-103 in MEMS microthrusters. The results show that the monopropellant can be successfully ignited at room temperature through 80 V, 0.1 A (8 W) using copper wire as electrodes. In the current thruster design, low thrust was obtained at FLP-103 flowrate of 40 μl·min^{− 1} but it generated the highest specific impulse, Isp, among all the flowrates tested. The experiments successfully demonstrated the potential application of electrolytic decomposition of FLP-103 in MEMS thrusters.