Casey Farnell
Research Scientist
Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Farnell is a research scientist at Colorado State University’s Center for Electric Propulsion and Plasma
Engineering (CEPPE), and a researcher and President of Plasma Controls, LLC.
Dr. Farnell’s graduate and post-graduate research at CEPPE focused on using diagnostics to investigate the plasmas produced near hollow cathodes and other plasma sources. Casey is well versed in low temperature plasma diagnostics, hollow cathode operation, vacuum systems, experimental setup, and data acquisition. During his research Casey has used, designed, and constructed electrostatic energy analyzers (ESAs), ExB charge state analyzers, Faraday-style current density probes, emissive probes, and Langmuir probes.
A portion of his research has been involved with argon and atomic oxygen ion sources designed to simulate the low earth orbit plasma environment. Current research is focused on heater and heater-less hollow cathode design. At Plasma Controls, Casey sells and researches tantalum, BaO-W based cathodes that are sold to the space and commercial markets in heater and heater-less instant-start cathode versions.