New type liquid He free 3He cryostat using commercial GM refrigerator

Abstract

We have succeeded to construct a novel 3He cryostat by improving a low cost commercial two stage Gifford-McMahon (GM) refrigerator whose cooling power is 0.3 W at 4.2 K. This main portion of this system consists of 4 K pot, 1 K pot, heat exchanger and 3He pot, which are connected to the second cold stage. The main portion is covered with the 1st radiation shield attached to the 1st cold stage and the 3He pot is covered with the 2nd radiation shield attached to the heat exchanger, where the 1st shield must be further covered with more than five layers of super-insulation films in order to realize 3He temperature. The achieved temperature is 0.4 K and persists over one day. The temperature oscillation is less than 1 mK below 4 K. The required time to attain the lowest temperature is typically about 8 hours. This system allows us to deal with almost all the low temperature experiments of condensed matter physics without requiring low temperature technique. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.