3-Methoxy-3-oxopropanaminium chloride

In the title compound, C4H10NO2 +·Cl−, the central ethylene bond of the cation adopts a gauche conformation. The three H atoms of the –NH3 + group are engaged in strong and highly directional intermolecular N—H⋯Cl hydrogen bonds, which result in a tape-like arrangement along [010] of the respective ion pairs. In addition, weak intermolecular C—H⋯Cl and C—H⋯O interactions are present.

In the title compound, C 4 H 10 NO 2 + ÁCl À , the central ethylene bond of the cation adopts a gauche conformation. The three H atoms of the -NH 3 + group are engaged in strong and highly directional intermolecular N-HÁ Á ÁCl hydrogen bonds, which result in a tape-like arrangement along [010] of the respective ion pairs. In addition, weak intermolecular C-HÁ Á ÁCl and C-HÁ Á ÁO interactions are present.
The three N-H units of (I) are engaged in apparently strong and highly directional N + -H···Clhydrogen bonds with three symmetry-related Clions (Table 1). These interactions result in a tape-like arrangement of the respective ion pairs parallel to the crystallographic b axis (Figure 2). In the packing, the corrugated two dimensional supramolecular network defined by the N-H···Cl interactions is connected with neighbouring strands via weak C-H···Cl and C-H···O contacts (Table 1) in the direction of the crystallographic c and a axes, respectively. Interestingly, the observed packing behaviour is very similar to the structure of glycine ethyl ester hydrochloride (He et al., 2010), an isomer of (I), and the analogous glycine methyl ester (Vilela et al., 2009).

Experimental
The title compound was prepared from 2-aminoethanol and acetyl chloride according to the literature (Hansen, 1963).
Crystals suitable for X-ray diffraction were obtained by slow evaporation of a solution of (I) in chloroform.

Refinement
The structure was refined freely, except for the hydrogen atoms which were refined prior to the generation of the riding model (Cooper et al., 2010). Weights were applied using a five parameter Chebychev polynomial (Watkin, 1994, Prince, 1982. Dihedral angles calculated with PLATON (Spek, 2009); all other standard uncertainties calculated from the full variance co-variance matrix within CRYSTALS (Betteridge et al., 2003).