59Co, 23Na NMR and electric field gradient calculations in the layered cobalt oxides NaCoO2 and HCoO2

⁵⁹Co and ²³Na NMR has been applied to the layered cobalt oxides NaCoO₂ and HCoO₂ at three different magnetic field strengths (4.7, 7.1 and 11.7 T). The ⁵⁹Co and ²³Na quadrupole and anisotropic shift tensors have been determined by iterative fitting of the NMR line shapes at the three magnetic field strengths. Due to the large ⁵⁹Co quadrupole interaction in NaCoO₂, a frequency-swept irradiation procedure was used to alleviate the limited bandwidth of the excitation. While the ⁵⁹Co and ²³Na shift and quadrupole coupling tensors in NaCoO₂ are found to be coincident and axially symmetric in agreement with the crystal symmetry requirements, the fits of the ⁵⁹Co NMR spectra clearly show the presence of structural disorder in HCoO₂. The ²³Na chemical shift anisotropy can be reproduced by shift tensor calculations using a point dipole model and considering that the magnetic susceptibility in NaCoO₂ is due to Van Vleck paramagnetism for Co³⁺. Electric field gradient calculations using either the empirical point charge model or the ab initio full potential-linearized augmented plane wave method are compared with the experimental NMR data.