Single crystal niobium development

Tokyo Denkai, KEK and TKX have developed a new niobium ingot slicing technique that allows slicing 150 pieces of large grain niobium discs in two days. Tokyo Denkai installed the slicing machine in December 2009. We inspected the sliced discs by the ultrasonic imaging and understood niobium crystal growth mechanism in Electron Beam Melting, which gave us an idea to make a single crystal niobium ingot. This paper describes the new high-speed production process of niobium discs, an idea of single crystal niobium ingot production and its pilot study result.