A study of the superconducting La2-xSrxCuO4 system by x-ray powder diffraction
Abstract
Room temperature crystalline structures of La2-xSrxCuO4 samples with uncommonly high hole concentrations (p) up to p=0.4, annealed under 1 and 100 bars of oxygen pressure have been analyzed by X-ray diffraction. Results show that the x=0 sample with p=0.09 and superconducting below 20K is orthorhombic at room temperature. The orthorhombic distortion at 300K decreases with increasing ϗ and becomes tetragonal when ϗ reaches 0.08. This orthorhombic-to-tetragonal phase transformation is consistent with previous work. Samples with x≥0.28 and p≥0.31 remain tetragonal but are nonsuperconducting down to 5K. Lattice dimension anomalies have also been observed and are correlated with the sudden appearance of oxygen vacancies, as seen by the hole concentration measurements. Initially, the value of the lattice dimension a decreases and c increases monotonically with increasing x. A sudden increase in a and decrease in c begins when x reaches 0.28 for samples prepared under 1 bar of oxygen indicating a sudden loss of oxygen from the structure. This sudden reversal in lattice dimensions a and c is not present in samples annealed under 100 bars of oxygen pressure suggesting essentially no oxygen vacancies. The increase in c with ϗ of the La2-xSrxCuO4 samples with no oxygen vacancies can be attributed mainly to the result of substituting smaller La+3ions by larger Sr+2ions. A study of the variation of c with the hole concentration reveals that the c lattice dimension drops sharply with no change in the hole concentration when oxygen is continuously removed from the lattice caused by an increase of the Sr content in La2-xSrxCuO4. © 1989, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.