• Valente-Feliciano, Anne-Marie
• Thune, Zackery
• Dhakal, Pashupati
• Chetri, Santosh
• Bieler, Thomas
• Balachandran, Shreyas

Abstract

Bulk Nb for TESLA shaped SRF cavities is a mature technology. Significant advances are in order to push Q₀’s to 10¹0⁻¹¹(T= 2K), and involve modifications to the sub-surface Nb layers by impurity doping. In order to achieve the lowest surface resistance any trapped flux needs to be expelled for cavities to reach high Q₀’s. There is clear evidence that cavities fabricated from polycrystalline sheets meeting current specifications require higher temperatures beyond 800 °C leads to better flux expulsion, and hence improves Q₀. Recently, cavities fabricated with a non-traditional Nb sheet with initial cold work due to cold rolling expelled flux better after 800 °C/3h heat treatment than cavities fabricated using fine-grain poly-crystalline Nb sheets. Here, we analyze the microstructure development in Nb from the vendor supplied cold work non- annealed sheet that was fabricated into an SRF cavity as a function of heat treatment building upon the methodology development to analyze microstructure being developed by the FSU-MSU-UT, Austin-JLAB collaboration. The results indicate correlation between full recrystallization and better flux expulsion.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• grain
• cold rolling
• recrystallization
• niobium