Nitrogen Contamination Causes High Field Q-Slope (HFQS) in Buffered Chemical Polished SRF Cavities

Abstract: Buffered Chemical Polishing (BCP) was the most conventional polishing method for superconducting radio frequency (SRF) Niobium (Nb) cavity surface preparation before the discovery of Electropolishing (EP), which is superior to BCP in high gradient performance. The High Field Q-slope (HFQS) is perfectly eliminated by taking the low temperature bake (LTB) post EP, which guarantees high gradient performance in EP'ed cavities. The mechanism of the HFQS is well understood for EP'ed cavities. On the other hand, there is no common consensus on the HFQS with BCP, since even BCP with LTB does not always resolve the HFQS. BCP is much easier to apply and still an important preparation technology for very complicated SRF structures like low beta cavities. Therefore, overcoming the issue of HFQS with BCP is highly beneficial to the SRF community. This paper mines a large number of available data sets on BCP'ed cavity performance with fine grain, large grain, and even single crystal niobium materials under different experimental settings. We found that all existing explanations for HFQS with BCP are inconsistent with some experimental results, and propounded nitrogen contamination as a new model. We checked that nitrogen contamination agrees with all existing data and nicely explains unresolved phenomena. Combining these evidence, we deduce that nitrogen contamination is the cause of HFQS in BCP.