Publikationsrepositorium - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

In 2014, the second-generation of the ELBE SRF gun replaced its predecessor, which had been in operation since 2007. In the first two years, copper and magnesium cathodes were initially used without any discernible problems. However, after switching to Cs2Te in 2017, it was found that the layers of two cathodes evaporated within a few days during RF operation in the Gun. Since this was never observed in Gun I, an extensive root cause search was conducted using a dedicated cathode test setup. The findings pointed to loose thermal contact between the cathode plug and the cathode body and ultimately resulted in a change
of the used cathode substrate from molybdenum to copper. Although this was accompanied by a lower quantum efficiency of about 5% after preparation, it stabilized to 1-2% during beam operation in the SRF gun. As of May 2020, three of these cathodes have now been successfully used for THz user beam time and a total charge of 26 C has been extracted. Together with the electrons still produced by Mg cathodes in 2019/2020, a total of 217 user shifts could be served and 2600h hours of beam time were delivered. This demonstrates the reliability of CW SRF in combination with normal conducting cathode and is so far unique in the world. During the talk, the reason for overheating, the preparation on Cu substrate as well as experiences from the past two years of user beam operation will be presented in detail.