Our previous work established that NiCl 2 (btd) can be made phase pure and crystalline through the direct reaction of NiCl 2 • 6 H 2 O and btd, and thus we first explored this approach to create the solid-solutions NiCl 2 (btd) 1-x (bod) x , attempting syntheses with target bod fraction, x t = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.0