High pressure strongly
favors the highest-density polymorph Z of
active pharmaceutical ingredient 2-(2,6-xylidino)-5,6-dihydro-4H-1,3-thiazine hydrochloride (xylazine hydrochloride, XylHCl)
up to about 0.1 GPa only, but still higher pressure destabilizes this
structure. Above 0.1 GPa, XylHCl preferentially crystallizes as solvates
with CH2Cl2, CHCl3, or (CH3)2CHOH depending on the solvent used. However, when XylHCl·H2O is dissolved in any of these solvents, the high-pressure
crystallizations yield the hydrate XylHCl·H2O only.
The single crystals of the CH2Cl2, CHCl3, and (CH3)2CHOH solvates could be grown
in situ in a diamond anvil cell, which allowed their structure determination
from the single-crystal diffraction data. At 0.4 GPa the XylHCl·H2O hydrate undergoes a pressure-induced phase transition doubling
the unit cell dimensions.