Single crystals of SnTe 3 O 8 in the millimetre range grown by chemical vapor transport reactions.

Tin(IV) trioxidotellurate(IV), SnTe 3 O 8 , is a member of the isotypic M IV Te IV 3 O 8 ( M = Ti, Zr, Hf, Sn) series crystallizing with eight formula units per unit cell in space group Ia . In comparison with the previous crystal structure model of SnTe 3 O 8 based on powder X-ray diffraction data [Meunier & Galy (1971 ▸). Acta Cryst. B 27 , 602-608], the current model based on single-crystal X-ray data is improved in terms of precision and accuracy. Nearly regular [SnO 6 ] octa-hedra (Sn site symmetry ..) are situated in the voids of an oxidotellurate(IV) framework built up by corner-sharing [TeO 4 ] bis-phenoids (Te site symmetry 2..). A qu-anti-tative structural comparison revealed a very high degree of similarity for the structures with M = Ti, Zr, Sn in the M IV Te 3 O 8 series.