Status report on CERN activities aiming at the production of sputter-coated copper superconducting RF cavities for LEP

To upgrade LEP energy above 55 GeV, the first step will consist in installing 32 SC cavities of 352 MHz frequency at Point 2 of the machine. This operation will be carried out in steps and should be completed by the end of 1991. It has been decided that 8 of the 32 cavities will be Nb coated copper cavities, the crucial part of which (i.e. the cavity proper) will be manufactured and coated at CERN. For the time being, 4 of these 8 cavities have been prepared. They present Q0 values at low field of about 1010, while at the specified operating field of 5 MV/m their Q0 range between 5 and 7 x 109. In order to carry out assembly, coating and rinsing of cavities in better (i.e. cleaner) conditions, an experimental hall is being prepared, which will become operational after summer 1989, such as to be used for the manufacturing of the second batch of 4 coated cavities. In parallel with this main activity, some work is also being devoted to the study of coatings of higher Tc materials, namely NbTiN. Due to the higher Tc, these new coatings should present a lower BCS RF resistivity, a necessary condition to obtain higher Q0 values. The first cavity coated so far with NbTiN (a single cell cavity of 500 MHz frequency) gave encouraging results, which however are not better than what was obtained with a Nb film. (author)