Preliminary Measurements of the Xenon Triple Point

Ever since the construction and definition of the highly successful International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90), one severe deficiency of the scale has been recognized, without a reliable remedy. The problem is the fact that the only then available high-quality fixed point between the argon triple point and the water triple point was the mercury triple point, which unfortunately is situated rather closely to the water triple point, thus having an extremely strong influence on the interpolation function of SPRTs in the Ar−H2O range. Already before 1990, measurements on possible fixed points better placed in this temperature range have been investigated, such as the triple points of krypton and xenon. However, results have been rather elusive, mainly regarding the rather large melting range of their transition. A turning point was the 2005 paper from the National Research Council (NRC, Canada), where it was established that the relatively high content of krypton was the culprit for the large melting range of the xenon transitions published previously. Indeed, measurements on a xenon sample with very low krypton content produced a very high-quality plateau, of the same level as other ITS-90 fixed points. However, no follow-up measurements have been reported, and thus neither have comparison measurements been reported. Shortly, after the appearance of the NRC paper, Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM, Italy) acquired a batch of the same high-purity xenon as used by NRC with the aim of preparing a few sealed cells with it and trying to reproduce the NRC results. However, with the start of the Neon Project (Euromet Project 770), the realization of these intentions had to be postponed until now. Last December, three cells of different design have been filled with this high-quality xenon and preliminary results of the measurements on the triple point are reported.