Determination of the crystal structure and composition of Li6Be4OH12 by the stochastic method.

Because of the failure to find a structure for LiBeH3 with a face-centered unit cube with edge 5.09 A, the x-ray powder pattern has been reindexed for a body-centered unit cube with edge 7.24 A. Application of the principles of structural chemistry leads to the formula Li6Be4OH12 and to a structure involving Be4OH12 clusters formed by 4 BeOH3 tetrahedra with their O corner shared, Be--(H,O) bond length 1.59 A, and with the clusters joined to one another by Li with octahedral or rectangular-planar coordination of 6 H or 4 H, Li-H bond lengths about 1.92 A.