J. Phys. Chem. C., 2020, 124, 1, 870–873. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b09322

The structure–property relationship is a hot research topic in both chemistry and material science. A structural descriptor has significant applications in machine learning and high-throughput screening for rapid estimations of material properties. In this work, we report a simple structural indicator to characterize the crystal-field splitting of Ce³⁺ ions in the garnet structure. The indicator is the interplanar distance of the octahedron, which is calculated as 2/√3 | x + y + z | · L, where L stands for the cell parameter and (x, y, z) are the oxygen coordinates in a specific form. The indicator value is correlated to the crystal-field splitting of Ce³⁺ in the lanthanide aluminum/gallium garnets and is able to reproduce the reverse garnet effect. By inspecting the polyhedral competition effect in the garnet structure, this indicator is found to be correlated to the tetragonal distortion of the dodecahedron, which determines the crystal-field splitting.