A TEM study of the incommensurate modulated structure in Sr2CuO3+δ

Hiroi et al. have recently reported the occurrence of superconductivity at a transition temperature of ~ 70 K in Sr2CuO3+δ. They observed a superstructure with lattice constants of Neutron diffraction studies on this compound by Shimakawa et al. indicate that the apical oxygen is fully occupied, whereas the oxygen in CuO2 plane is half occupied. If oxygen does not fully occupy in the conducting CuO2 planes, it raises doubts about our current understanding of superconductivity in the cuprates, which relies on full oxygen occupancy for the CuO2 planes.Recently, Han et al. observed a dependence of Tc on post annealing treatment of the high pressure synthesized Sr2CuO3+δ. They noticed that heating the sample to 300°C increased the Tc from 70 K to 94 K and that further heating to 450°C caused the sample to lose superconductivity.In order to investigate the structural and microchemical details of Sr2CuO3+δ, transmission electron diffraction, high resolution electron microscopy, and electron energy loss spectroscopy are employed.