A millikelvin precision temperature control system designed for a low cost, portable and variable temperature blackbody from 298.15 to 693.15 K.

Millikelvin precision portable variable temperature blackbody from 298.15 to 693.15 K is very important in the on-site calibration of infrared measuring instruments. The stability of the blackbody temperature directly affects the calibration quality. However, the temperature measurement and control system is the key component to guarantee the stability of the blackbody temperature. In this article, a measurement and control system of the low-cost and portable blackbody was designed and verified. A Pt100 platinum resistance thermometer was employed to measure the temperature of the blackbody radiation source. Based on the round-robin structure and current reversing technology, the precision of the temperature measurement achieved a sub-millikelvin level. To overcome the drawbacks that traditional proportional integral derivative (PID) controller would lead to large overshoot and long adjustment time during the temperature control of the large thermal inertia blackbody, a feedforward and segmented PID controller was introduced to improve the dynamic performance of the blackbody radiation source. The experimental results showed that the precision of the temperature measurement at 0.5 Hz was better than 0.5 mK and the temperature stability within 10 min was better than 3 mK in the temperature range from 298.15 to 693.15 K. Hence, the millikelvin precision measurement and control system has a strong prospect for practical application in high-performance blackbody development.