“…In fact, a thorough description of the vibrational dynamics of the prototype compound of orthovanadate family with zircon-type structure is provided in our present work, by showing reliable experimental evidences of some Raman modes, which were either not reported in the existing literature [18][19][20][21] or wrongly assigned in wave number. 23 In particular, the difficult detection of the systematically missing E g (4) mode, which is characterized by an extremely weak intensity, fully confirms the correctness of the hypothesis formulated by Elliott et al 20 On the other hand, what is also more important, by comparison with the compounds of the orthophosphate family 28,45,46 and rare-earth arsenates 47 with the same zircon-type structure, we can infer that, as far as the other compounds of this orthovanadate family are considered, the frequency of this E g mode should be nearly independent of the rare-earth ion mass, and, therefore, that it should occurs close nearby at the same frequency as it is observed in YVO 4 . Moreover, the highly symmetry-selective measurements of this study point out the added value of our experimental approach based on the use of a micromanipulator to properly orientate the sample.…”