Plasma etching has a potential to be an alternative processing technology for superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities. An apparatus and a method are developed for plasma etching of the inner surfaces of SRF cavities. To test the effect of the plasma etching on the cavity rf performance, a 1497 MHz single cell SRF cavity is used. The single cell cavity is mechanically polished, buffer chemically etched afterwards and rf tested at cryogenic temperatures for a baseline test. This cavity is then plasma processed. The processing was accomplished by moving axially the inner electrode and the gas flow inlet in a step-wise manner to establish segmented plasma processing. The cavity is rf tested afterwards at cryogenic temperatures. The rf test and surface condition results are presented.
@article{arxiv.1605.06494,
title = {Cryogenic rf test of the first plasma etched SRF cavity},
author = {J. Upadhyay and A. Palczewski and S. Popović and A. -M. Valente-Feliciano and D. Im and L. Phillips and L. Vušković},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.06494},
year = {2016}
}