A15 superconductors: an alternative to niobium for RF cavities

Since the international committee for future accelerators recommended that the linear collider design should be based on the superconducting technology, the scientific world interest is now focused on further developments of new resonant cavities fabrication technics and cost reduction. Besides the attempt to improve the Nb sputtered on Cu accelerating structures performances, it is important to pursue research on new materials. The goal will be the achievement of superconducting cavities working better than the Nb ones at 4.2 K. Among the possible candidates, A15 compounds appear to be the most promising. Three of them were chosen: Mo-Re system which shows the A15 phase far from the stoichiometric composition (Mo3Re), V3Si that has a really high RRR value, Nb3Sn that is the only A15 compound already used for a resonant accelerating structure [G. Muller, P. Kneisel, D. Mansen, H. Piel, J. Pouryamout, R.W. Roeth, in: Proceedings of the 5th EPAC, London, 1985, p. 2085] and we obtained some interesting preliminary results. We are setting up a 6 GHz cavities measurement system: it is very simple, fast to use and it will give us the opportunity to make such small resonators become our samples.