Magnetic alignment in nominally non-magnetic hexagonal metal hydrides: NMR

Powders of three hexagonal metal-hydrides or -deuterides are found to align in 4.4-8.3 T magnetic fields used for NMR. The field-alignment is unexpected, since all three systems have very small susceptibilities, as demonstrated by sharp NMR lines. The extent of alignment runs from nearly complete to barely detectable in ZrBe2(H,D)x, LuD3, and YD3, respectively. The preferred alignment direction in ZrBe2(H,D)x is with the crystallites' c-axis perpendicular to B, while the c-axis and B tend to be parallel in LuD3 and YD3. The susceptibilities chi parallel and chi perpendicular are determined from bulk magnetization measurements in aligned ZrBe2H1.4 powder. The alignment must be considered for proper analysis of NMR spectra in these and related materials.