Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, USA
The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA
NCSU AIF, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Understanding the improvement of the SRF cavity quality factor by low-level nitrogen addition ("N-doping") is attracting much attention from researchers. Precise, repeatable measurement of the nitrogen profile in the parts-per-thousand to parts-per-million range is vital. Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) is the approach of choice because of excellent sensitivity and depth resolution. Accurate quantitation must consider sample properties, such as surface topography and crystal structure, calibration of the instrument with reference materials, and data analysis. We report the results of a SIMS study in which polycrystal and single crystal coupons were N-doped, each accompanied by new SRF-grade niobium sheet equivalent to a single cell cavity.
JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA
Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois, USA
It has been shown that cooldown details through transition temperature can significantly affect the amount of trapped magnetic flux in SRF cavities, which can lead to performance degradation proportional to the magnitude of the ambient magnetic field.[*] It has also more recently been shown that depending on the exact material properties - even when the material used originated from the same batch from the same vendor - and subsequent heat treatment, the percent of flux trapped during a cool-down could vary widely for identical cool-down parameters.[**] For LCLS-II, two material vendors have produced half of the niobium used for the cavity cells (Tokyo Denkai Co., Ltd. (TD) and Ningxia Orient Tantalum Industry Co., Ltd. (NX)). Both vendors delivered material well within specifications set out by the project (according to ASTM B 393-05), which allows yet some variation of material characteristics such as grain size and defect density. In this contribution, we present RF and magnetic flux expulsion measurements of four single cell cavities made out of two different niobium batches from each of the two LCLS-II material suppliers and draw conclusions on potential correlations of flux expulsion capability with material parameters. We present observations of limited flux expulsion in cavities made from the production material and treated with the baseline LCLS-II recipe.
[*] A. Romanenko et al J. Appl. Phys. 115, 184903 (2014)
[**] S. Posenet et al., Journal of Applied Physics 119, 213903 (2016).
JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA
The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, USA
The current state of the art processing of niobium superconducting radio frequency cavities with nitrogen diffusion is performed at 800C in a furnace with a partial pressure of approximately ~20 mtorr of nitrogen. Multiple studies have shown the bulk of the nitrogen absorbed by the niobium forms a thick (1-3 microns) non-superconducting nitride layer which must be removed to produce optimal RF results. The depth profiling of interstitial nitrogen and surface nitrides has already been probed using SIMS measurements. These measurements have also been modeled by extrapolating data from nitride growth studies performed at atmospheric pressure and temperatures above 1000 C (**). One open question is whether there is a diffusion zone at lower temperature in which the niobium will absorb nitrogen but not create a non-superconducting nitride layer; or is the absorption of nitrogen only possible by first forming a nitride buffer layer which then frees up nitrogen for absorption. A systematic study of absorption rate vs. temperature and correlated SIMS measurements needs to be performed to answer this question. We report on the absorption rate vs. temperature from 400 C to 900 C of cavity grade niobium with metallurgically flat witness samples. The witness samples surface depth profile of NbN via SIMS's will be presented and correlated to the absorption.**
* Gonnella et al., Proceedings of SRF2015 Pre-release MOPB042 (2015)
** Tuggle et al., Investigation of Low-Level Nitrogen in Niobium by Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, these proceedings (2016)