Rare earth phosphates have been used extensively in luminescent phosphors.Hexagonal Ce1-xGdxPO4 with crystal field manipulation was successfully synthesized using a hydrothermal method.The photoluminescence emission intensity of hexagonal CePO4 was obviously enhanced by the crystal structure manipulation with gadolinium ions codoping.Compared to pure CePO4,the intensity photoluminescence was enhanced about 15 folds with x =0.05.The effect of gadolinium doping was systematically investigated by X-ray diffraction,transmission electron microscopy,X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy.Crystal field asymmetry can be effectively tuned by different amount of Gd3+ codoping,and the crystal field asymmetry is conductive to electron population of high energy level of Ce3+ ions.This material has potential applications in optics,electronics fields,and so on.Meanwhile,the method can be extended to another kind of high performance photoluminescence materials preparation.