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Tag archive: niobium

LINACs in all (linear) shapes and sizes

| 4 September 2014 With more 200 linear accelerators around the world in operation for research, and more than 8000 linear accelerators serving industrial and medical application, future linear colliders played a small but important role at the LINAC14 conference this week in Geneva. It's R&D for future facilities that could make all linacs more efficient and reliable. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , ,

The capability for producing niobium sheets

| 26 January 2012 Japanese company Tokyo Denkai is boosting high-purity niobium production and processing with some new equipment and a better-outfitted shop. Should the ILC be built, the company will be able to handle the large order of niobium needed for accelerator cavities. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , , ,

The mass production of SRF linac cavities

| 28 July 2011 Niobium’s superconducting ability recommends it as a metal of choice for ILC accelerating cavities, but it brings challenges to the R&D table. Laboratories and industry alike work to set down the best possible, most cost-effective process for forming niobium into high-performing structures. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , ,

Impersonating bulk niobium

| 5 May 2011 Anything bulk niobium can do, thin films can do better. At least, that’s the hope of Jefferson Laboratory scientists, who are currently exploring a method that would allow them to create customisable thin niobium films. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , , , ,

A conformal approach to cavity coating

| 28 April 2011 Argonne researchers are working to coat accelerator cavities with perfectly uniform atomic layers of niobium. The thin film technology could help slash production and operation costs in particle accelerator programmes while boosting accelerator performance. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , , ,

Seamless cavity performance

| 7 April 2011 Fermilab and Jefferson Lab redouble efforts on hydroformed cavities through R&D and industrialisation. Category: Feature | Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

The ILC, a very special market for high purity niobium

| 1 July 2010 The ILC will have an ultra-cold and complex heart made of niobium, a rare, soft, grey, and ductile transition metal. Some 18,000 radio frequency (RF) accelerating cavities for the ILC will be made of niobium, which becomes superconductor when cooled to nearly absolute zero. The global annual production of niobium in 2007 was 58,000 tonnes, and it is expected to grow up to 45 percent more in 2010 with a positive trend towards economic recovery. Although it is a 'rare' material, the reserves of niobium are assumed to be enough to cover the current world demand for 500 years Category: Feature | Tagged: , ,

ILC challenges materials science

| 6 December 2007 Physicists and engineers already know most of the empirical recipes to build very good accelerating cavities: highly pure niobium is essential, welding needs to be carefully controlled and surfaces undergo advanced cleaning and annealing procedures. But, as for every complex system, a lot of phenomena remain unexplained. The theoretical limits of RF superconductivity are not well known, and engineers also meet practical limitations to reach high gradients. Accelerator experts work very closely with material scientists to understand cavity properties better. Category: Feature | Tagged:

US-manufactured cavity achieves high gradient

| 6 December 2007 Turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie – all things you might appreciate on Thanksgiving. ILC scientists in the United States had something extra to be thankful for this year. On 21 November, the day before the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, a superconducting cavity manufactured by Advanced Energy Systems in Medford, NY, reached a high gradient of 32.6 megavolts per metre (MV/m) at Jefferson Laboratory. “This is the first US-built ILC nine-cell cavity to reach a gradient close to the ILC specification,” said Rongli Geng, the lead scientist at JLab on the nine-cell high-gradient cavity processing R&D. JLab scientists are hopeful that the cavity, dubbed AES2, will reach an even higher gradient after further processing. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , ,