Experimental and theoretical investigations on optical properties of multiferroic PrCrO3 ortho-chromite compound

Abstract The PrCrO3 ceramic compound was prepared by the sol-gel route. The optical properties of this ceramic were characterized by UV–Vis absorption spectroscopy. By direct investigation of the UV absorption measurements and using the Tauc model, we have determined the direct optical band gap estimated between 3.26 and 3.20 eV. Furthermore, the Urbach energy, the optical extinction coefficient and the refractive index were calculated on the basis of absorbance measurements. The skin depth, the optical conductivity as well as the dispersion energy parameters as a function of the wavelength of the incident photon were determined and discussed. The emissions are attributed to the d-d transitions of Cr3+ ion in PrCrO3. A theoretical crystal-field analysis of the visible lines associated to the Cr3+(3d3) ion transition occupying an Oh site symmetry in PrCrO3 is realized which leads to a satisfactory correlation between experimental and calculated energy levels. The electronic structure was compared with the reported for Cr3+ ion in RECrO3 (RE = Er, Tm, Yb, Lu, Y) ceramics. The obtained results show that our compound may be proposed as a good candidate for opto-electronic devices.