This volume of the Handbook is the second of a two-volume set of reviews devoted to the rare-earth-based high-temperature oxide superconductors (commonly known as hiTc superconductors).

Because of the rapid development of our knowledge of these materials, a review on this topic several years ago would have been hopelessly out of date even before the papers would be sent to the publisher. About five years ago the field began to mature, and it was felt it would be a good time to look into the possibility of publishing a series of review papers on rare-earth-containing hiTc superconductors.

In volume 31 we have ten chapters to complement the eight which appeared in print as volume 30 at the end of 2000 on the same topic.
These ten chapters are concerned with the electronic structure and various chemical, physical and optical properties of the hiTc oxides.

The first chapter is an extensive review of oxygen nonstoichiometry and lattice effects in Yba2Cu3Ox (YBCO). The next chapter concentrates on flux pinning effect which result in high critical current densities even at high temperatures and in high magnetic fields. The magnetoresistance and Hall effect in both normal and superconducting states of the cuprate superconductors are reviewed in chapter 3. The following two chapters are devoted to neutron scattering studies. And chapter 6 reviews some aspects of the low-temperature heat capacity of the ceramic oxide superconductors. The next three chapters are concerned with various spectroscopies - photoemission, infrared and Raman. Finally the tunneling spectra of the cuprate superconductors and the characterisation of these materials by scanning tunneling microscopy are discussed in chapter 10.