Monolithically 3D-Printed Microfluidic Flow Distributor for Uniform Operation of Multiplexed Electrospray Droplet Cubesat Thrusters

We present a novel, 3D-printed flow distributor design part of a pressure-fed CubeSat electrospray thruster that uniformly supplies propellant from a single inlet to multiple emitters. The design compensates for fabrication errors in channel diameter and pressure perturbations at the outlets to attain a uniform supply of flow across the emitter array. A 3D-printed device with four outlets is synthesized and characterized, demonstrating uniform flow rates across all channels. The reported optimization framework can be readily applied to other PowerMEMS applications that require a uniform supply of small flow rates across arrays of devices, e.g., multiplexed microreactors.