Cooling of electrically insulated high voltage electrodes down to 30 mK: Kühlung von elektrisch isolierten Hochspannungselektroden bis 30 mK

The Antimatter Experiment: Gravity, Interferometry, Spectroscopy (AEGIS) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is an experiment investigating the influence of earth’s gravitational force upon antimatter. To perform precise measurements the antimatter needs to be cooled to a temperature of 100 mK. This will be done in a Penning trap, formed by several electrodes, which are charged with several kV and have to be individually electrically insulated. The trap is thermally linked to a mixing chamber of a 3He-4He dilution refrigerator. Two link designs are examined, the Rod design and the Sandwich design. The Rod design electrically connects a single electrode with a heat exchanger, immersed in the helium of the mixing chamber, by a copper pin. An alumina ring and the helium electrically insulate the Rod design. The Sandwich uses an electrically insulating sapphire plate sandwiched between the electrode and the mixing chamber. Indium layers on the sapphire plate are applied to improve the thermal contact. Four differently prepared test Sandwiches are investigated. They differ in the sapphire surface roughness and in the application method of the indium layers. Measurements with static and sinusoidal heat loads are performed to uncover the behavior of the thermal boundary resistances. The thermal total resistance of the best Sandwich shows a temperature dependency of T-2,64 and is significantly lower, with roughly 30 cm2K4/W at 50 mK, than experimental data found in the literature. The estimated thermal boundary resistance between indium and sapphire agrees very well with the value of the acoustic mismatch theory at low temperatures. In both designs, homemade heat exchangers are integrated to transfer the heat to the cold helium. These heat exchangers are based on sintered structures to increase the heat transferring surface and to overcome the significant influence of the thermal resistance (Kapitza resistance). The heat exchangers are optimized concerning the adherence of the sinter to the substrate and its sinter height, e.g. its thermal penetration length. Ruthenium oxide metallic resistors (RuO2) are used as temperature sensors for the investigations. They consist of various materials, which affect the reproducibility. The sensor conditioning and the resulting good reproducibility is discussed as well