Improvement and protection of niobium surface superconductivity by Atomic Layer Deposition and heat treatment
T. Proslier (1,2), J. Zasadzinski (1), J. Moore (3), M. Pellin (2), J., Elam (4), L. Cooley (5), C. Antoine (6), J. Norem (3), K.E. Gray (2) ((1), BCPS, Illinois (Institute) of Technology, (2) Materials Science Division,, Argonne National Laboratory
TL;DR
This study explores how Atomic Layer Deposition and heat treatment can enhance niobium's surface superconductivity, potentially improving superconducting RF cavity performance through surface modifications and thermal processing.
Contribution
It introduces a novel surface treatment combining ALD coating and heat treatment to improve niobium's superconducting properties for RF applications.
Findings
Superconducting density of states improves after heat treatment above 450°C.
Initial UHV bake degrades superconductivity, but high-temperature bake restores and enhances it.
ALD alumina coating influences surface superconductivity characteristics.
Abstract
A method to treat the surface of Nb is described which potentially can improve the performance of superconducting RF cavities. We present tunneling and x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) measurements at the surface of cavity-grade niobium samples coated with a 3 nm alumina overlayer deposited by Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). The coated samples baked in ultra high vacuum (UHV) at low temperature reveal at first degraded superconducting surface. However, at temperatures above 450C, the tunneling conductance curves show significant improvements of the superconducting density of states (DOS) compared with untreated surfaces.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.