Hydrolysis
This implies that hydrogen chloride is lost in the evaporation of AlCl3 solutions and the residue is a basic salt (in this case an oxychloride) in place of AlCl3. This type of reaction is also seen with other metal chlorides such as ZnCl2, SnCl2, FeCl3 and lanthanide halides such as DyCl3. With some compounds such as TiCl4, the hydrolysis may go to completion and form the pure hydroxide or oxide, in this case TiO2.