Towards a thermodynamic assessment of transition plateaus

摘要

This second part of the work is devoted to the thermodynamic implications of the results presented in the preceding paper, as heat flow meters (HFMs) were installed within a thermometric fixed-point cell operated with indium. Then, simultaneous measurements of both temperature and heat flow allow us to pinpoint the specific boundaries (solidus and melt-off points) of a given transition plateau. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first experimental illustration being reported on how to consider a plateau as a specific thermodynamic regime marked with a minimum amount of generated entropy in a metrological fixed-point cell. As a result, a significant relationship linking the boundaries of the plateau and the melting temperature of the material studied is presented. In order to obtain a quantitative understanding of the quality of a given transition process, straightforward thermodynamic considerations allow us to consider both theoretically and experimentally an adimensional parameter defined as the ratio of the entropy generation over the entropy change.