JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA
The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, USA
Exploiting both the new Nb3Sn coating system and the materials characterization tools nearby, we report our progress in low-loss Nb3Sn films development. Nb3Sn films a few micrometers thick were grown on Nb coupons as well as single- and multi-cell cavities by the Sn-diffusion technique. Films structure and composition were investigated on coated samples and cavity cutouts with characterization tools including SEM/EDS/EBSD, AFM, XPS, SIMS towards correlating film growth and RF loss to material properties and deposition parameters. Cavity coating efforts focused on establishing techniques for coating progressively more complicated RF structures, and understanding limiting mechanisms in coated cavities. Nb3Sn coated 1.5 GHz 1-cell and 1.3 GHz 2-cell cavities have shown quality factors of 1010 at 4.3 K, with several cavities reaching above Eacc = 10 MV/m. The dominant limiting mechanisms were low field quenches and quality factor degradation above 8 MV/m. The surface data indicates a near-stoichiometric Nb3Sn consistent with the transition temperature and gap measurements. The Nb3Sn layer is covered with Nb2O5 and SnO2 native oxides and has little memory of the pre-coating surface.
The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA
The potential for energy savings and for increased gradient continues to bring attention to Nb3Sn-coated niobium as a future SRF cavity technology. We prepared these materials by vapor diffusion coating on polycrystalline and single crystal niobium. The effect of changing substrate preparation, coating parameters and post-treatment were examined by AFM and SEM/EDS. The AFM data were analyzed in terms of power spectral density (PSD). We found little effect of pre-coating topography on the result. The PSD’s show some surprising kinship to those obtained from BCP-treated surfaces. SEM/EDS revealed no composition non-uniformities at the micron scale.