The atomistic structure of yttria stabilised zirconia at 6.7 mol%: an ab initio study

interatomic separation is an important parameter for determining the relative configurational energies. Current force field models are found to be poor predictors of the lowest energy structures. It is suggested that the energies from a simple point charge model evaluated at unrelaxed geometries is actually a better descriptor of the energy ordering of dopant structures. Using these observations a pragmatic procedure for identifying low energy structures in more complicated material models is suggested. Calculation of the oxygen vacancy migration activation energies within the lowest energy 〈210〉 oriented structures gives results consistent with experimental observations.