The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is the national metrology institute of Germany. PTB performs fundamental research and development work in the field of metrology as a basis for all the tasks entrusted to it in the areas concerning the determination of fundamental and natural constants, the realization, maintenance and dissemination of the legal units of the SI, safety engineering, services and metrology for the area regulated by law and for industry, as well as technology transfer.

NPL is a world-leading centre in the development and application of highly accurate measurement techniques. As the UK's national standards laboratory, NPL underpins the national measurement system, ensuring consistency and traceability of measurements throughout the UK. Other areas of expertise include the design and characterisation of engineering materials, and the development of mathematical software, especially its application to measurement and instrumentation. www.npl.co.uk

LNE (Laboratoire National de Métrologie et d'Essais) is a state-owned company attached to the French Ministry of Industry. LNE's public service missions are 1) operate as the national reference laboratory in metrology, 2) pursue its scientific and technological development in order to anticipate new measurement and testing requirements in the fields of energy, safety, health, quality and environmental protection, 3) provide state authorities and key economic players with the technical assistance they require to draft new regulations and standards at national, European and International level. As a National Metrology Institute (NMI), LNE has been developing for many years competencies, comprehensive and high accuracy facilities for measuring the main thermophysical properties of materials, such as thermal transport properties, caloric quantities and radiative properties in large temperature ranges. LNE has strong expertise in the development and adaptation of facilities for the measurement of those properties on many materials.

In METCO project, LNE will adapt techniques for traceable measurements, up to 800°C, of thermophysical properties related to heat transport (thermal conductivity, specific heat, thermal diffusivity) and of spectral radiative properties of piezoelectric and electrocaloric materials under electric field. Those properties are required to quantify figures of merit of those materials.

MIKES is the National Metrology Institute of Finland. MIKES metrology realises the SI system measurement units in Finland, performs high-level metrological research and develops measuring applications in partnership with industry.

The MIKES Length group research activities cover wide range from realisation of national measurement standards instruments like stabilised lasers and interferometers to closely industry related issues like form, roughness and co-ordinate metrology. An example of recent development relevant to high accuracy surface topography measurement is the development of the interferometrically traceable AFM

For many years the laboratory for AC-DC transfer and power of INRIM has developed methods and systems, based on sampling, specifically oriented to high precision electrical metrology. Projects aiming at assembling new types of electronic systems in this field have been pursued both for the generation of ac voltages and for the measurement of voltage, current, power, complex voltage ratio and phase.

The laboratory has also investigated the characterisation of digital to analogue converters and analogue to digital converters for the measurement of generic signals (distorted and non periodic). They have expertise in both hardware (design of analog and digital circuits for sampling) and software (algorithms for signal processing).

INRIM has also developed considerable expertise in the field of design and characterisation of transducers for high voltage and current and has taken part in international comparisons of high voltages and currents carried out in the framework of EUROMET. Research projects focused on traceability and verification of instrument transformers in the high voltage grid have been recently developed in collaboration with Italian private and public companies of the electro-energy sector. In addition, INRIM has significant know-how in the setting-up and use of numerical tools for the design and optimization of electromagnetic devices.

TMIRS/SIQ has experience in sampling techniques for power measurement for more than 6 years that are relevant to the asynchronous sampling work needed for the measurement of signals on the power grid. They have developed their own sampling software for the measurement of power at 50 Hz (voltage up to 700 V and current up to 50 A). They participated in Euromet key comparisons in power. They also have experience in current shunts development and their own current shunts are their reference standards in ac current measurements. MIRS/SIQ has specific expertise in mathematical modelling techniques which it will contribute to algorithm development and in the characterisation of transducers.

Is a National Metrology Institute of Czech Republic. CMI covers all the key fields of fundamental, industrial and legal metrology, maintaining and developing national standards, performing metrology research and measurements from primary etalons up to the level of practical calibrations for industry. Since 1998, a scientific group forming later Department of Nanometrology focused on scanning probe microscopy metrology and related methods development. This includes at present providing traceability for scanning probe microscopy methods (metrology SPM), and developing methods for quantitative analysis of different physical quantities with nanometer resolution and numerical analysis. The main effort of the Department is equally distributed between scientific projects, instrumentation development and publication activities.