Refinement of the crystal structure of malonic acid,C3H4O4

A reinvestigation of the X-ray crystal structure of malonic acid (C₃H₄O₄) has been made in the light of some observations arising from solid-state¹³C NMR studies on this compound. The unit cell parameters are:a=5.156(1),b=5.341(1),c=8.407(1) Å, =71.48^o (2), =76.12^o (2), =85.09^o (2), space group ,Z=2. The structure was solved by direct methods and refined by full-matrix least-squares refinement to a finalR value of 0.038 for 711 unique reflections withl>3. The packing of the molecules involves dimeric hydrogen bonded association of each carboxyl group with a centrosymmetrically related neighbor. The angles O–C–O (123.3^o and 124.8^o, respectively) for the two carboxyl groups agree qualitatively with the values predicted from a linear relationship relating the observed ₂₂ component of the Carbon-13 NMR chemical shielding tensor for the carboxyl carbon atom to the bond angle O–C–O at the carbon atom.Contribution No. 825.