Magnesium diboride on inner wall of copper tube: A test case for superconducting radio frequency cavities

Abstract

Superconductor magnesium diboride is considered one of the viable materials to substitute bulk niobium for superconducting radio frequency cavities. Utilizing a MgB_{2} coating on the inner wall of a copper cavity will allow operation at higher temperatures (20–25 K) than Nb cavities due to the high transition temperature of MgB_{2} (39 K) and the high thermal conductivity of Cu. In this paper, we present results of MgB_{2} coating on Cu tubes with similar dimensions to a 3 GHz cavity, as the first step towards coating the actual cavity, using the hybrid physical chemical vapor deposition technique. The results show successful coating of a uniform MgB_{2} layer on the inner wall of the Cu tubes with T_{c} as high as 37 K.