Structural properties of one-dimensional Cs₂CoCl₄ confined within single-walled carbon nanotubes

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Crystals under one-dimensional (1D) confinement are well-known to exhibit drastic changes in metallicity, magnetic properties and chemical state, however, the intermediate phase space between binary metal halides and ternary metal halide perovskites remains poorly explored, especially in the context of the rich polymorphism exhibited by both families in the one-dimensional limit. Through aberration-corrected (scanning) transmission electron microscopy and multislice simulations, it is shown that the metal halide Cs₂CoCl₄ crystallizes in the tetragonal 4/mcc and orthorhombic mcm rod groups under radial compression within single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) of increasingly small diameter, with a massive re-entrant orthorhombic strain towards the 1 nm extremum. The persistence of Co²⁺ is determined from fits to the d.c. magnetization, with a surprisingly small increase in the effective moment (4.607(3) to 4.788(3) μB/f.u.) and Weiss constant (-7.9(3) to -4.09(7) K) after confinement in the SWCNTs, suggesting that the confined structure topologically preserves the core magnetic properties of the bulk. Both unconventional polymorphs observed are noticeably different to the high-pressure piezochromic polymorph previously shown to undergo a tetrahedral-to-octahedral coordination transition, highlighting 1D confinement as a unique tool for structural manipulation.