CrystalXRD-Bench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for XRD Peak Indexing Across Diverse Crystalline Materials

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xu, Chengliang, Li, Xiaogang, Xiao, Peiyao, Wang, Beng, Wei, Hu, Zhao, Bing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Xu, Chengliang
Li, Xiaogang
Xiao, Peiyao
Wang, Beng
Wei, Hu
Zhao, Bing
author_facet Xu, Chengliang
Li, Xiaogang
Xiao, Peiyao
Wang, Beng
Wei, Hu
Zhao, Bing
contents Miller-index identification from powder XRD patterns requires capabilities untested by existing multimodal benchmarks: the model must read a narrow peak location from a rendered scientific curve and then connect that observation to multi-step crystallographic reasoning. We introduce CrystalXRD-Bench, a 250-sample benchmark built from 10 public crystallographic databases for a single task: recover the full set of HKLs contributing to the highest-intensity peak in an XRD pattern. Each sample pairs the rendered XRD image with the source CIF text and chemical formula, so visual extraction errors and reasoning errors can be examined side by side. We evaluate seven vision-language models. The best Jaccard score is 0.5888 (GPT-5.4) with an exact-match rate of 37.6%, yet six of seven models remain below Jaccard 0.50; the task is far from solved. Error patterns vary systematically: double-peak cases are especially brittle, recall-heavy models gain coverage by over-predicting HKLs, and access to CIF text does not close the gap in crystallographic calculation. Alongside model rankings, the benchmark identifies the conditions under which current VLMs fail on quantitative scientific figures. All data and evaluation code will be publicly available.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_29446
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CrystalXRD-Bench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for XRD Peak Indexing Across Diverse Crystalline Materials
Xu, Chengliang
Li, Xiaogang
Xiao, Peiyao
Wang, Beng
Wei, Hu
Zhao, Bing
Artificial Intelligence
Miller-index identification from powder XRD patterns requires capabilities untested by existing multimodal benchmarks: the model must read a narrow peak location from a rendered scientific curve and then connect that observation to multi-step crystallographic reasoning. We introduce CrystalXRD-Bench, a 250-sample benchmark built from 10 public crystallographic databases for a single task: recover the full set of HKLs contributing to the highest-intensity peak in an XRD pattern. Each sample pairs the rendered XRD image with the source CIF text and chemical formula, so visual extraction errors and reasoning errors can be examined side by side. We evaluate seven vision-language models. The best Jaccard score is 0.5888 (GPT-5.4) with an exact-match rate of 37.6%, yet six of seven models remain below Jaccard 0.50; the task is far from solved. Error patterns vary systematically: double-peak cases are especially brittle, recall-heavy models gain coverage by over-predicting HKLs, and access to CIF text does not close the gap in crystallographic calculation. Alongside model rankings, the benchmark identifies the conditions under which current VLMs fail on quantitative scientific figures. All data and evaluation code will be publicly available.
title CrystalXRD-Bench: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for XRD Peak Indexing Across Diverse Crystalline Materials
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.29446