Hydrogen bonds and van der Waals forces as tools for the construction of a herringbone pattern in the crystal structure of hexane-1,6-diaminium hexane-1,6-diyl bis­(hydrogen phospho­nate)

The asymmetric unit of the title salt, [H(3)N(CH(2))(6)NH(3)][(HO)O(2)P(CH(2))(6)PO(2)(OH)], consists of one half of a hexane-1,6-diaminium dication and one half of a hexane-1,6-diyl bis­(hydrogen phospho­nate) dianion. Both are located around different centres of inversion (Wyckoff sites: 2a and 2d) of the space group P2(1)/c. The shape of the hexane-1,6-diaminium cation is best described as a double hook. Both aminium groups as well as the two attached CH(2) groups are turned out from the plane of the central four C atoms. In contrast, all six C atoms of the dianion are almost in a plane. The hydrogen phospho­nate (–PO(3)H) groups of the anions and the aminium groups of the cations form two-dimensional O—H⋯ and O—H⋯N hydrogen-bonded networks parallel to the ac plane, built up from ten-membered and twelve-membered ring motifs with graph-set descriptors R (3) (3)(10) and R (5) (4)(12), respectively. These networks are linked by the alkyl­ene chains of the anions and cations. The resulting three-dimensional network shows a herringbone pattern, which resembles the parent structures 1,6-di­amino­hexane and hexane-1,6-di­phospho­nic acid.