21–25 Sept 2026
Crowne Plaza Chester, Chester, United Kingdom
Europe/London timezone

Superconducting properties of Nb-Zr thin films for particle accelerators and quantum applications

23 Sept 2026, 11:45
20m
Prince of Wales Suite (Crowne Plaza Chester, Chester, United Kingdom)

Prince of Wales Suite

Crowne Plaza Chester, Chester, United Kingdom

Beyond Nb & Nb3Sn: Alternate materials, multilayer SIS structures and functional layers Beyond Nb & Nb3Sn: Alternate materials, multilayer SIS structures

Speaker

Dr Malvika Tripathi (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)

Description

We investigated the superconducting properties of 200 nm thick Nb-Zr thin films with various Zr concentrations ranging from 0 to 22 at.%. 200 nm thick Nb-Zr thin films were deposited on c-plane sapphire substrates by magnetron sputtering at RT, and the microstructures and superconducting properties of the films were systematically analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and physical property measurement systems (PPMS). XRD and TEM analyses show that the bcc Nb-Zr films are typical (110) textured polycrystalline films with 20-30 nm grain diameter columnar grains. We find that critical temperature (Tc) increases from 8.5 K to 9.9 K with increasing Zr concentration in Nb-Zr thin film from 0 to 15-22 at.% and upper critical field (Hc2) values increase from ~3 T to above 10 T. Current results demonstrate that Nb-Zr thin films have improved Tc and Hc2, which is beneficial for potential application to thin film SRF cavities and quantum device applications.

Authors

Jaeyel Lee (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) Dr Malvika Tripathi (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) Dr Shakel Sharifuzzaman (Old Dominion University) Dr Zuhawn Sung (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) Dr Hani E. Elsayed-Ali (Old Dominion University) Dr Akshay Murthy (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) Dr Daniel Bafia (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)

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