Superconductors with high critical temperatures are extremely complex and it remains difficult to synthesize high quality samples. In this regard, the materials and crystallographic aspects, drawing together the fields of structural chemistry and physics, solid state chemistry and physics, and applications and properties, both for cuprate and organic superconductors, play a vital role in our understanding of the phenomenon. Among other things, the contributions to local structural elucidation contained in the present work will shatter the reader's prejudices concerning the idealized average structure.

Preface. Part I: Structure and Structure-Properties Relationship. A classification of the copper oxide superconductors and the relationship between the CU valence and the superconducting properties. Neutron powder diffraction on the ILL high flux reactor and high Tc superconductors. Local structural distortion: implication to the mechanism of high temperature superconductivity. Superstructures in 123 compounds X-ray and neutron diffraction. Accurate X-ray structural investigations of single crystals of high-Tc materials. Structural and physical properties of superconducting La₂CuO_4+delta. Electron energies in oxides. The system La_2-xSr_xCuO₄. The n-type copper oxide superconductors. Charge dynamics in high Tc copper oxides. Lattice instabilities and superconductivity in La-214 compounds. Part II: Physics of HTSC. Probing crystallographic and materials properties of Y-Ba-Cu-O superconductors by NMR and NQR. Infrared properties of selected high Tc superconductors. Probing high-temperature superconductivity with positive muons. Extreme type II superconductors: universal properties and trends. IR-excited Raman spectroscopy on HT_c superconductors. Numerical simulation of high temperature superconductors. Evidence from EXAFS for an axial oxygen centered lattice instability in YBa₂Cu₃O_7-delta? Single crystal growth and characterization of thallium cuprate superconductors -- a review. Part III: Flux Pinning, Pinning Centers, Applications. Flux pinning in high-temperature superconductors. Flux pinning of high temperature superconductors and their applications. High-Tc thin films. Growth modes -- structure -- applications. Engineered grain boundary junctions -- characteristics, structure, applications. Part IV: Organic Superconductors. High-energy spectroscopic studies of fullerene and cuprate superconductors. Electron microscopy and the structural studies of superconducting materials and fullerites. Structure-property relationships in radical-cation (electron-donor molecule) and annion-based (including fullerides) organic superconductors and their use in the design of new materials. Part V: Phase Diagrams of HTSC. Phase diagram, synthesis and crystal growth of YBaCuO phases at high oxygen pressure Po₂<3000 bar. Thermodynamic stability of superconductors in the Y-Ba-Cu-O system.