distorted from a regular shape since one oxygen is unconstrained (an atom that is bonded only to the central tungsten (W) atom), and the three other oxygens are each bonded to a zirconium atom (i.e. the corner-sharing of polyhedra). The structure has P213 space group symmetry at low temperatures. At higher temperatures, a centre of inversion is introduced by the disordering of the orientation of tungstate groups, and the space group above the phase transition temperature (~180C) is Pa. Octahedra and tetrahedra are linked together by sharing an oxygen atom. In the image, note the corner-touching between octahedra and tetrahedra; these are the location of the shared oxygen. The vertices of the tetrahedra and octahedra represent the oxygen, which are spread about the central zirconium and tungsten. Geometrically, the two shapes can "pivot" around these corner-sharing oxygens, without a distortion of the polyhedra themselves. This pivoting is what is thought to lead to the negative thermal expansion, as in certain low frequency normal modes this leads to the contracting 'RUMs' mentioned above. High pressure forms At high pressure, zirconium tungstate undergoes a series of phase transitions, first to an amorphous phase, and then to a U3O8-type phase, in which the zirconium and tungsten atoms are disordered. Zirconium tungstate-copper system Through hot-isostatically pressing (HIP) a ZrW2O8-Cu composite (system) can be realized. Work done by C. Verdon and D.C. Dunand in 1997 used similarly sized zirconium tungstate and copper powder in a low carbon steel can coated with Cu, and they were HIPed under 103MPa pressure for 3 hours at 600 °C. A control experiment was also conducted, with only a heat treatment (i.e., no pressing) for the same powder mixture also under 600 °C for 3 hours in a quartz tube gettered with titanium. The results from X-ray diffraction (XRD) in the graph in Verdon & Dunand's paper shows expected products. (a) is from the as received zirconium tungstate powder, (b) is the result from the control experiment , and (c) is the ceramic product from the HIP process. Apparently there are new phases formed according to Spectrum (c) with no ZrW2O8 left. While for the control experiment only partial amount of ZrW2O8 was decomposed. While complex oxides containing Cu, Zr, and W were believed to be created, selected area diffraction (SAD) of the ceramic product has proven the existence of Cu2O as precipitates after reaction. A model consisted of two