Rf and microwave measurements at Los Alamos on oxide superconductors

Los Alamos National Laboratory has made a substantial commitment to develop oxide superconductors for RF and microwave cavity applications. The program involves materials development, complete microstructure characterization, static thermal and electrical characterization, RF loss measurements and microwave complex-conductivity measurements. Of the high-frequency techniques, three are nearing completion and one has produced preliminary results. Those still under development include a 3 GHz Nb cavity capable of 4 K operation, a LN2-cooled 2.25 GHz copper cavity having a Q of 2 x 104, capable of operation from 15 K to 300 K, and a picosecond-laser/photo-diode driven microstripline technique which will provide complex conductivity information from 20 GHz to 200 GHz and from 10 K to 300 K. Because all of the techniques employed sense the impedance of the samples, their sensitivity to intrinsic properties such as conductivity or surface resistance is dependent on sample geometry. However, for easily handled samples, the Nb cavity can detect losses at least four order of magnitude lower than copper, the copper cavity can detect losses two orders of magnitude lower than copper and the microstripline can detect losses comparable to copper. The technique which has produced results is a coaxial microwave bridge. In this work they report results of measurements on sintered samples using the bridge; future work will concentrate on films. 2 references, 1 figure