In the title molecular salt, C 6 H 9 N 2 + ÁC 7 H 5 O 3 À , the cation is protonated at its pyridine N atom and and makes a dihedral angle of 16.26 (9) with the plane of the six-membered ring of the anion. The six-membered ring makes a dihedral angle of 6.09 (3) with the attached carboxylate group. In the anion, an intramolecular O-HÁ Á ÁO hydrogen bond generates an S(6) ring motif and a pair of N-HÁ Á ÁO hydrogen bonds generates an R 2 2 (8) ring motif. In the crystal, the anions and cations are linked via N-HÁ Á ÁO hydrogen bonds to form a tetramer.
Structure descriptionPyridine and its derivatives play an important role in heterocyclic chemistry (Pozharski et al., 1997;Katritzky et al., 1996) and they are also known to exhibit non-linear optical (NLO) properties (Tomaru et al., 1991). Herein, we report on the synthesis and the crystal structure of the title molecular salt. The title compound, Fig. 1, contains a 2-amino-6-methylpyridinium cation, which is protonated at atom N1, and 2-hydroxybenzoate which is deprotonated at its O2 atom. The geometric parameters are comparable with those reported for similar structures (Jin et al., 2000(Jin et al., , 2001Quah et al., 2010).The benzene ring (C1-C6) of the anion makes a dihedral angle of 6.09 (3) with the attached carboxylate (C7/O2/O3) group. The benzene and pyridine rings are inclined at an angle of 16.26 (9) . In the anion, an intramolecular O-HÁ Á ÁO hydrogen bond generates an S(6) ring motif (Fig. 1). In the crystal, the anions and cations are connected by N-HÁ Á ÁO hydrogen bonds generating an R 2 2 (8) ring motif (Fig. 2). Four pairs of anions and cations are linked by N-HÁ Á ÁO hydrogen bonds (Table 1) to form a tetramer with an R 4 4 (16) ring motif (Fig. 3). 2-Amino-6-picoline (0.54 g) and 2-hydroxybenzoic acid (0.69 g) in an equimolar ratio were mixed in acetone and the mixture was stirred for 3 h. A single crystal of the title compound suitable for X-ray diffraction was obtained by slow evaporation.