2.2. Phase transition simulation of zirconia
The study in this section is aimed at the structural properties of tetragonal phase zirconia (t-ZrO2) under
compressive pressures. According to soft mode mechanism [25], tetragonal distortion occurs when a hydrostatic
compression is applied. As the tetragonal distortion increases, t- ZrO2 will transform to a cubic structure (c-ZrO2).
In the present calculations, the energy cutoff for expanding wave functions was set to 750 eV. For the Brillouin
zone integration, Monkhorst Pack of 8