The crystal structure of a new hafnium oxyhydroxide obtained by an ion-exchange reaction from a Li2HfO3 precursor has been solved by a direct method and refined using Rietveld full profile fitting based on X-ray powder diffraction data. HfO(ОН)2 crystallizes in a P21/c monoclinic unit cell (a = 5.5578(5) Å, b = 9.0701(10) Å, c = 5.7174(5) Å, β = 119.746(5)°); its structure can be described as a framework formed by edge-sharing HfO6 octahedra connected to each other via vertices. In addition, an analysis of the atomic pair distribution function obtained using synchrotron radiation was used to confirm the model and to describe fine-structure features.
