Study of spacecraft surface charging and secondary electron emission of insulators

Spacecraft charging due to electron in space can cause serious problem to the safety and reliability of spacecraft and the secondary electron emission (SEE) of insulators is important to study of spacecraft charging. This paper investigates the surface potential as a function of secondary electron emission of the insulators with Particle-In-Cell (PIC) method. The influence of different materials secondary electron emission coefficients on surface charging is acquired. The results indicate that the surface potential depends on the secondary electron emission of insulators strongly. Furthermore, the surface potential is observed to be larger at higher projectile energy and higher fluence.