SBIR/STTR Award attributes
The Phase I effort will be to design and fabricate a test thermionic emission module device. The emitter and collector surfaces will be refractory metal alloys with a minimum work function and will be polished to a 0.01 μm tolerance. Each surface will be coated with BaSrO to ensure the lowest possible work function. A mica-ceramic sleeve with a recessed emitter will maintain a 10 μm gap spacing from the collector that is optimal for a vacuum type device. The operating temperatures to be explored will be between 1600K-2000K (emitter) and 800K-1200K (collector). A single device may deliver 1-10 A at an output voltage of 0.5-1 V. The eventual thermionic device power output goal would be 1-10 W/cm2, which could be modularized to produce 10-100 kW of electrical power over 1 m2 of surface area within the hypersonic vehicle.
