Further of shear planes compensates for the energy loss, effectively preventing the crystal structure from collapsing. This aligns with experimental observations, which indicate that shear planes buffer the material against further reduction by accommodating excess titanium interstitials generated as oxygen is removed . As the reduction progresses and titanium interstitials accumulate, they allow the lattice to reorganize into a more stable, lower-energy configuration. This reorganization reduces the free energy of the system by converting corner-sharing octahedra into edge-sharing configurations along the shear planes.