Electrode contamination effects of retarding potential analyzer

The electrode contamination in electrostatic analyzers such as Langmuir probes and retarding potential analyzers (RPA) is a serious problem for space measurements. The contamination layer acts as extra capacitance and resistance and leads to distortion in the measured I-V curve, which leads to erroneous measurement results. There are two main effects of the contamination layer: one is the impedance effect and the other is the charge attachment and accumulation due to the capacitance. The impedance effect can be reduced or eliminated by choosing the proper sweeping frequency. However, for RPA the charge accumulation effect becomes serious because the capacitance of the contamination layer is much larger than that of the Langmuir probe of similar dimension. The charge accumulation on the retarding potential grid causes the effective potential, that ions experience, to be changed from the applied voltage. Then, the number of ions that can pass through the retarding potential grid to reach the collector and, thus, the measured ion current are changed. This effect causes the measured ion drift velocity and ion temperature to be changed from the actual values. The error caused by the RPA electrode contamination is expected to be significant for sounding rocket measurements with low rocket velocity (1-2 km/s) and low ion temperature of 200-300 K in the height range of 100-300 km. In this paper we discuss the effects associated with the RPA contaminated electrodes based on theoretical analysis and experiments performed in a space plasma operation chamber. Finally, the development of a contamination-free RPA for sounding rocket missions is presented.