Development of Aluminium Vacuum Chambers for the LHC Experiments at CERN

Beam losses may cause activation of vacuum chamber walls, in particular those of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. For the High Luminosity (HL-LHC), the activation of such vacuum chambers will increase. It is therefore necessary to use a vacuum chamber material which interacts less with the circulating beam. While beryllium is reserved for the collision point, a good compromise between cost, availability and transparency is obtained with aluminium alloys; such materials are a preferred choice with respect to austenitic stainless steel. Manufacturing a thin-wall aluminium vacuum chamber presents several challenges as the material grade needs to be machinable, weldable, leak-tight for small thicknesses, and able to withstand heating to 250°C for extended periods of time. This paper presents some of the technical challenges during the manufacture of these vacuum chambers and the methods for overcoming production difficulties, including surface treatments and Non-Evaporable Getter (NEG) thin-film coating.