Incommensurately modulated structure of TaGe0.354Te2: Application of Crenel functions

The incommensurately modulated structure of tantalum germanium telluride, TaGe0.354Te2, was determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The dimensions of the basic orthorhombic cell are a = 6.4394 (5), b = 14.025 (2), c = 3.8456 (5) Angstrom, V = 347.3 (1) Angstrom(3) and Z = 4. The (3 + 1)-dimensional superspace group is Pnma(00 gamma)s00, gamma = 0.3544 (3). Refinements on 1641 reflections with I greater than or equal to 3 sigma(I) converged to R = 0.065 and 0.044 for 526 main reflections and R = 0.061, 0.12, 0.28 and 0.32 for 782 first-order, 237 second-order, 37 third-order and 59 fourth-order satellites, respectively. Since the structure exhibits a strong occupational modulation of both Ta and Ge atoms, along with important displacive modulation waves, crenel functions were used in the refinement in combination with an orthogonalization procedure. Such an approach is shown to be the most convenient and to give reliable coordinations and distances. A detailed analysis of some Te ... Te distances is performed, in connection with already known commensurately and incommensurately modulated MA(x)Te(2) structures.