Structural synthon approach to the study of stacking faults in the layered double hydroxides of lithium and aluminum

A single layer of the Li-Al layered double hydroxide (LDH) can be considered to be a structural synthon that can be stacked in a number of ways to give rise to the polytypes of the Li-Al LDH family. The topotactic imbibition of lithium into gibbsite and bayerite precursors gives rise to crystalline 2H and 1M 1 polytypes respectively. In contrast the sample formed through a gel to crystallite route is found to be a 1M 1 polytype with stacking disorders whose local symmetry corresponds to the 1M 2 polytype. On heating, a solid-solid 1M 1â1H polytype transformation is observed. Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim