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A New Vacuum Brazing Route for Niobium-316L Stainless Steel Transition Joints for Superconducting RF Cavities

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Abstract

The paper describes a new approach for vacuum brazing of niobium-316L stainless steel transition joints for application in superconducting radiofrequency cavities. The study exploited good wettability of titanium-activated silver-base brazing alloy (CuSil-ABA®), along with nickel as a diffusion barrier, to suppress brittle Fe-Nb intermetallic formation, which is well reported during the established vacuum brazing practice using pure copper filler. The brazed specimens displayed no brittle intermetallic layers on any of its interfaces, but instead carried well-distributed intermetallic particles in the ductile matrix. The transition joints displayed room temperature tensile and shear strengths of 122-143 MPa and 80-113 MPa, respectively. The joints not only exhibited required hermeticity (helium leak rate <1.1 × 10−10 mbar l/s) for service in ultra-high vacuum but also withstood twelve hour degassing heat treatment at 873 K (suppresses Q-disease in niobium cavities), without any noticeable degradation in the microstructure and the hermeticity. The joints retained their leak tightness even after undergoing ten thermal cycles between the room temperature and the liquid nitrogen temperature, thereby establishing their ability to withstand service-induced low cycle fatigue conditions. The study proposes a new lower temperature brazing route to form niobium-316L stainless steel transition joints, with improved microstructural characteristics and acceptable hermeticity and mechanical properties.

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Acknowledgments

Authors are thankful to Dr. P. D. Gupta, Director, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology for his constant support and guidance during the course of the study. The authors wish to thank Mrs. Pragya Tiwari for her help in SEM-EDS analysis of vacuum brazed specimens and Mr. Avinash Puntambekar for providing niobium pipes for the experiments. The authors thankfully acknowledge UGC-DAE-CSR for providing SEM-EDS facility for characterization of the specimens. They express their sincere thanks to Mr. V. K. Ahire of UGC-DAE-CSR for EDS analysis of our specimens. The authors thank Mr. A. P. Singh, Mr. C. Manikandan and Mr. G. S. Deshmukh for their useful contribution in chemical cleaning and nickel electroplating. They thankfully acknowledge technical assistance of Mr. R. Chouhan, Mr. S. K. Chourasia, Mr. J. S. Pulickal, Mr. V. Pal, Mr. Om Praksh, Mr. A. Chowdhury, Mr. U. Chatterji, Mr. N. More, Mr. T. R. Meena, Mr. D. C. Nagpure and Mr. Ram Nihal Ram during various stages of the investigation. The authors wish to thank Mr. J. D. Zolpara and Mr. B. Oraon for preparing drawings of test specimens and fixtures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, P.O: CAT, Indore, 452 013, India

    Abhay Kumar, P. Ganesh, R. Kaul, V. K. Bhatnagar, K. Yedle, P. Ram Sankar, B. K. Sindal, K. V. A. N. P. S. Kumar, M. K. Singh, S. K. Rai, A. Bose, T. Veerbhadraiah, S. Ramteke, R. Sridhar, G. Mundra, S. C. Joshi & L. M. Kukreja

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  1. Abhay Kumar
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Kumar, A., Ganesh, P., Kaul, R. et al. A New Vacuum Brazing Route for Niobium-316L Stainless Steel Transition Joints for Superconducting RF Cavities. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 24, 952–963 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-014-1312-1

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