Blackbody Sources for the Range 100 K to 3500 K for Precision Measurements in Radiometry and Radiation Thermometry

The paper presents a detailed review of precision blackbodies that are low-, medium-, and high-temperature range sources developed at VNIIOFI during the past 30 years. Low-temperature blackbodies were developed for calibration facilities of spaceborne instruments. Medium-temperature blackbodies are used for radiance temperature and IR radiometric measurements. The high-temperature pyrolitic graphite blackbodies BB3200 and BB3500 were developed for world-leading metrology centers as NIST (USA), PTB (Germany), NPL (Great Britain), VNIIOFI (Russia), CNAM (France) and others for the realization and dissemination of radiometric and radiation temperature scales. The latest modification of the high-temperature blackbody BB3500MP, the large-aperture version (with an opening of up to 16 mm) of the famous BB3500, suitable for holding large fixed-point cells with high-temperature TiC-C and ZrC-C eutectics, is under development.