Improvements in the realization of the ITS-90 over the temperature range from the melting point of gallium to the freezing point of silver at NIM

The temperature primary standard over the range from the melting point of gallium to the freezing point of silver in National institute of Metrology (NIM), China, was established in the early 1990s. The performance of all of fixed-point furnaces degraded and needs to be updated due to many years of use. Nowadays, the satisfactory fixed point materials can be available with the development of the modern purification techniques. NIM plans to use a group of three cells for each defining fixed point temperature. In this way the eventual drift of individual cells can be evidenced by periodic intercomparison and this will increase the reliability in disseminating the ITS-90 in China. This article describes the recent improvements in realization of ITS-90 over temperature range from the melting point of gallium to the freezing point of silver at NIM. Taking advantages of the technological advances in the design and manufacture of furnaces, the new three-zone furnaces and the open-type fixed points were developed from the freezing point of indium to the freezing point of silver, and a furnace with the three-zone semiconductor cooling was designed to automatically realize the melting point of gallium. The reproducibility of the new melting point of gallium and the new open-type freezing points of In, Sn, Zn. Al and Ag is improved, especially the freezing points of Al and Ag with the reproducibility of 0.2mK and 0.5mK respectively. The expanded uncertainty in the realization of these defining fixed point temperatures is 0.34mK, 0.44mK, 0.54mK, 0.60mK, 1.30mK and 1.88mK respectively