Ca-VII: A chain ordered host-guest structure of calcium above 210 GPa

Accepted

The recently discovered high pressure phase VII of calcium [M. Sakata et al., Phys. Rev. B 83, 220512(R) (2011)] has the highest superconducting transition temperature ( Tc ) of 29 K among all the elements. Understanding the cause for such a high Tc state is necessary to clarify its crystal structure. The structure of this phase was determined by an x-ray powder diffraction experiment and a density functional theory calculation and was not found to be the usual host-guest type but consisted of a 2��2 supercell in the tetragonal ab-plane with a commensurate host-guest ratio of 4/3 along the c-axis containing 128 atoms.