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Study of heat transfer at cryogenic temperatures involve two significant phenomena known
as Kapitza conductance and Phonon Peak which are usually neglected above liquid helium
temperatures. In order to comprehend these phenomena in relation to Helium-II and Niobium, it is
paramount to discuss a little about Helium-II and Niobium and their combined applications.
The greatest temperature drop between a heated surface i.e. Niobium and a He-II reservoir
connected by a channel of He-II will frequently occur right at the solid-liquid interface and be driven
by Kapitza conductance. Even in the case of He-I (T > 2.2K) the effect of Kapitza conductance is
frequently neglected. In cases where the surface heat flux is sufficient to generate boiling, the boiling
heat transfer mechanism dominates and Kapitza conductance is negligible.
Kapitza conductance does dominate in cases where the T < 2.2K and where no boiling
occurs. This covers a wide range of important technological applications including cooling of
superconducting RF cavities and magnets, heat exchanger design and applications below 1K. The
accelerating gradients in superconducting RF cavities can be limited by excessive temperature rise
on the inner surface. In some circumstances, such as high RF frequency or anomalous losses,
improved heat transfer at the niobium-helium interface can increase the achievable gradient (Grimm
2006). Refer Fig. 2 (A. Aizaz 2010).
Kapitza conductance is independent of any motion of the fluid in contact with the solid.
However, it depends on the temperature, residual stresses in solids as well as on their surface finish
and surface impurities (Grimm 2006). Kaptiza conductance can be improved by controlling these
factors and (Aizaz 2017) has reported 300% increase in Kapitza conductance through Annealing at
higher temperatures during Niobium RF cavities fabrication process.
Phonon Peak
Phonon Peak refers to some local maxima in
the declining trend of thermal conductivity once the
solid is subjected to cryogenic temperatures below
liquid He-II superfluid. At the operating temperatures
of the cavity, when Nb is in its superconducting state,
its thermal conductivity varies dramatically with
temperature and is governed by the interplay of both
of the heat carriers, i.e., electrons and phonons. The
thermal conductivity of Nb above 4 K is dominated by
the electronic conduction of thermal energy. For
temperatures below 3 K, due to dominant phonon
conduction (A. Aizaz 2010). Though not always the
case with high RRR Nb material, a typical curve for
large grain (through annealing) Nb thermal conductivity usually shows local maxima below 3 K,
known as phonon peak (H. Padamsee 1998).
A phonon is a quantum mechanical description of an elementary vibrational motion in which
a lattice of atoms or molecules uniformly oscillates at a single frequency. The thermodynamic
properties of a solid are directly related to its phonon structure. At absolute zero temperature, a
crystal lattice lies in its ground state, and contains no phonons. A lattice at a nonzero temperature
has an energy that is not constant, but fluctuates randomly about some mean value. These energy
fluctuations are caused by random lattice vibrations, which can be viewed as a gas of phonons. This
random motion of the atoms in the lattice is what we usually think of as heat (Simon 2013).
The major advantage of the improved phonon peak in the thermal conductivity is for high
frequency defect-free cavities operating at 2 K. The signicance of the phonon peak on the improved
performance of SRF cavities can be realised form Fig. 2. The numerically estimated improvement
in magnetic field of Niobium RF cavities significantly increase accelerating gradients in
superconducting RF cavities. (A. Aizaz 2010).
(A. Aizaz 2010) through rigorous experimentations, further studied the effect of low, moderate
and high temperature annealing on Niobium superconducting RF cavities. Low temperature
annealing (at 750 0C for 2 hours) was found to be insufcient to recover the lost phonon peak.
However, titanication done at 1300 0C restored the lost phonon peak. Ignoring other effects, simple
1D numerical computations performed in this study reveal that the effect of recovery of the lost
phonon peak along with improved Kapitza conductance resulted in 50% improvement in the applied
magnetic elds for the case of 1.3 GHz cavity operating at 2 K. Thus, the need for titanication of
cavities is found to be the single most necessary step in the preparation of high frequency cavities
resulting in improved performance through enhanced phonon peak and signicantly increased
Kapitza conductance.