A Manufacturing Technique for Binary Clathrate Hydrates for Cold and Very Cold Neutron Production

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Intense sources of very cold neutrons (VCNs) would be beneficial for various neutron scattering techniques and low-energy particle physics experiments. Binary clathrate hydrates hosting deuterated tetrahydrofuran (THF-d) and dioxygen show promise as potential moderators for such sources due to a rich spectrum of localized low-energy excitations of the encaged guest molecules. In this article, we present a reliable manufacturing technique for such hydrates. Neutron diffraction data confirm their clathrate structure as type II (CS-II), determine their purity, and cage occupancy. Furthermore, we present data on the thermal expansivity of THF-d– and THF-d–O2clathrates, drawing attention to them as an interesting case study for the complex structure and dynamics of this class of material.