The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA
Current superconducting radio frequency (SRF) technology, used in various particle accelerator facilities is reliant upon bulk Nb. Due to technological advancements in the processing of bulk Nb cavities, the facilities have reached accelerating fields very close to material-dependent limits, i.e. ~50 MV/m for bulk Nb. One possible solution to overcome this limit proposed by A. Gurevich consists of the deposition of alternating thin layers of superconducting and insulating materials on the interior surface of the cavities which may prevent early field penetration and thus delay high field breakdown*. Some candidate materials proposed for this scheme are NbN and NbTiN. Here we present experimental results correlating film microstructure and surface morphology with superconducting properties on coupon samples made with NbN and NbTiN. We have achieved thin films with close to bulk-like lattice parameters and transition temperatures, while achieving Hc1 values larger than bulk for films thinner than their London penetration depths. We compare results from samples grown utilizing NbTi targets with different stoichiometries and we will show RF measurements from 2” coupon samples.
*A. Gurevich, Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 012511 (2006).
