Characterization of vacuum brazed joints for superconducting cavities

Brazing is a process to join metallic and non-metallic materials, without any melting or plastic state of the base metals. The poor wettability of ceramic may be improved by the use of alloys containing an element capable of changing the chemistry of the ceramic surface (active braze). In this paper we propose the substitution of the Electron Beam welding with Vacuum Brazing in order to join the resonator components, Nb, Cu OFHC, and Al2O3, with stainless steel flanges, in superconducting resonant cavities. Several combinations of brazed joints have been tested. The characterization of the joints has been performed with SEM-EDS and MICROPIXE. All the joints fulfil the requirements.