Grain boundaries have long been known to have a deleterious effect on the superconducting critical current that can be carried by YBa2Cu3O7-δ. Recent theoretical analyses have proposed that the origin of this behavior may be band bending, which results in the depletion of charge carriers at the grain boundaries. For this to occur in these p-type superconductors there must, by definition, be a high density of localized donor states in the boundary plane. Here we describe a structural feature intrinsic to all [001] tilt boundaries that may be the origin of these localized states.

Direct atomic-resolution images of asymmetric [001] tilt grain boundary structures have been obtained using the Z-contrast imaging technique. The grain boundaries are observed to be composed of distinct structural units, as shown in figure 1. Within these structural units, a 2×1 reconstruction of the CuO columns is seen to occur. This reconstruction, which is caused by the constraint imposed on the structure by the sizes of the component atoms, leads to effective oxygen vacancies in the grain boundary plane (figure 2). Further oxygen annealing of the boundary cannot fill these vacancies as there is no space in the structure for more oxygen atoms.