Magnetic-field induced orientation and anisotropic susceptibility of normal alkanes

Nonfunctionalized $n$-alkanes, a basic organic building block, are not commonly associated with magnetic behavior. To quantify magnetic field effects on wax crystals, synchrotron x-ray scattering was used to measure the angular distribution arising from competition between Brownian rotation and magnetic energy in a dispersion of uniform-sized $n$-alkane single crystals. Dramatic alignment of both axes occurred with a preference of the carbon-backbone plane to be ⊥ to $\overrightarrow{H}.$ Diamagnetic anisotropies were obtained by quantitative analysis of the orientational distribution.