Purpose Surface quality of the substrate is widely acknowledged to be essential for the niobium thin film deposition. Mucheffort has thus been spent to improve the surface roughness by using various chemical etching t...Purpose Surface quality of the substrate is widely acknowledged to be essential for the niobium thin film deposition. Mucheffort has thus been spent to improve the surface roughness by using various chemical etching techniques. However, surfacepreparation before the chemical etching also plays a part in obtaining a satisfactory substrate, but has rarely been studiedbefore. This paper aims to define a specification for the pre-polished copper substrate prior chemical etching and searches forsuitable alternative non-chemical grinding methods for the copper cavity.Methods Copper samples were mechanically pre-polished at first by using flap sanding wheels of different grits and thenchemically etched by using the well-established SUBU solutions. Surface roughness, as a figure of merit, was measuredand compared before and after SUBU. Optimum practice for pre-polishing may therefore be determined. The mechanicalgrinding was subsequently applied on the 1.3-GHz mono-cell copper cavity. Meantime, the previously reported centrifugalbarrel polishing method was also applied with new abrasive materials and modified schemes. A comprehensive study ofetching rate, surface roughness and morphologies was conducted.Results and conclusions The specification for surface roughness prior SUBU was determined. Due to a complex geometryand curved surfaces possessed by the 1.3-GHz copper cavity, the traditional mechanical grinding was proved to be not ideal.Satisfactory surface quality was obtained by using the alternative centrifugal barrel polishing on the cavity. The proposed newscheme and new abrasive materials were demonstrated to be effective, and a mirror-like surface was achieved on the coppercavity. The traditional mechanical grinding can therefore be replaced. This constitutes a dedicated study on pre-polishing ofthe 1.3-GHz copper cavity substrate prior chemical etching for niobium sputtering.展开更多
文摘Purpose Surface quality of the substrate is widely acknowledged to be essential for the niobium thin film deposition. Mucheffort has thus been spent to improve the surface roughness by using various chemical etching techniques. However, surfacepreparation before the chemical etching also plays a part in obtaining a satisfactory substrate, but has rarely been studiedbefore. This paper aims to define a specification for the pre-polished copper substrate prior chemical etching and searches forsuitable alternative non-chemical grinding methods for the copper cavity.Methods Copper samples were mechanically pre-polished at first by using flap sanding wheels of different grits and thenchemically etched by using the well-established SUBU solutions. Surface roughness, as a figure of merit, was measuredand compared before and after SUBU. Optimum practice for pre-polishing may therefore be determined. The mechanicalgrinding was subsequently applied on the 1.3-GHz mono-cell copper cavity. Meantime, the previously reported centrifugalbarrel polishing method was also applied with new abrasive materials and modified schemes. A comprehensive study ofetching rate, surface roughness and morphologies was conducted.Results and conclusions The specification for surface roughness prior SUBU was determined. Due to a complex geometryand curved surfaces possessed by the 1.3-GHz copper cavity, the traditional mechanical grinding was proved to be not ideal.Satisfactory surface quality was obtained by using the alternative centrifugal barrel polishing on the cavity. The proposed newscheme and new abrasive materials were demonstrated to be effective, and a mirror-like surface was achieved on the coppercavity. The traditional mechanical grinding can therefore be replaced. This constitutes a dedicated study on pre-polishing ofthe 1.3-GHz copper cavity substrate prior chemical etching for niobium sputtering.
