Lithium aluminium hydride
inorganic compound with the chemical formula LiAlH4
Lithium aluminium hydride, commonly abbreviated to LAH, is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula Li[AlH4] or LiAlH4. It is a white solid, discovered by Finholt, Bond and Schlesinger in 1947. This compound is used as a reducing agent in organic synthesis, especially for the reduction of esters, carboxylic acids, and amides. The solid is dangerously reactive toward water, releasing gaseous hydrogen (H2). Some related derivatives were once discussed for hydrogen storage.
Properties, structure, preparation
LAH is a colourless solid, but commercial samples are usually gray due to contamination. This material can be purified by recrystallization from diethyl ether. Large-scale purifications employ a Soxhlet extractor. Commonly, the impure gray material is used in synthesis, since the impurities are innocuous and can be easily separated from the organic products. The pure powdered material is pyrophoric but not its large crystals.
The public source identifies “Lithium aluminium hydride” as inorganic compound with the chemical formula LiAlH4. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lithium, aluminium and hydride.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q409574. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lithium aluminium hydride” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.