Anion-Centered Polyhedron Strategy for Strengthening Photon Emission Induced by Electron-Phonon Coupling

Electron-phonon coupling emerges as a growing frontier in the heart of condensed matter from physical symmetry to the electronic quantum state, but its quantitative strength dependence on the chemical structure has not been assessed. Here, we originally proposed the anion-centered polyhedron (ACP) strategy for elaborating the electron-phonon coupling interaction in rare-earth (RE) materials comprising three chemical factors, RE-O bond length, the effective charge of the coordinated atom, and structural dimensionality. Using Gd³⁺ cation with 4f⁷ configuration as a fluorescence probe, we found that the "free-O"-centered polyhedron is the most crucial motif in strengthening the phonon-assisted energy transfer and photon emission. The temperature-dependent Huang-Rhys S factors were calculated to identify the electron-phonon coupling intensity based on the fluorescence spectrum quantitatively. Finally, beyond conventional wisdom, a series of structural criteria were presented, serving as useful guidelines for discovering strongly coupled rare-earth optical materials. Our study breaks the long-time "blind"-searching diagram and provides reliable principles for many functional materials associated with electron-phonon coupling, such as superconductors, multiferroics, and phosphors.