A novel approach in synthesizing Te-diol compounds for tellurium-loaded liquid scintillator

Tellurium-loaded liquid scintillator provides a competitive way for searching neutrinoless double beta decay due to the huge cost advantages. A reliable technique needs to be developed to load tellurium into liquid scintillator (LS) without severely affecting the optical properties and stability of LS. Soluble and transparent Te-diol compounds would be a good choice. A novel synthesis method based on the characteristics of the reactions between telluric acid and diols is reported in this paper. The products show quite good stability and transparency by removing water from the reaction system continuously during synthesis. A sample prepared using this method with 0.6% Te loaded shows very limited influence on the absorbance of scintillation solvent around 430 nm and remained the same within the equipment sensitivity (10−4) for six months. The method can also be extended to many other diols which will greatly expand the range of candidate Te-diol compounds.