Structural transition, magnetic and optical properties of Pr and Ti co-doped BiFeO3 ceramics

Bi1-xPrxFe1-xTixO3 ceramics with x=0.00, 010 and 0.20 were synthesized by a solid state reaction method. Rietveld fitting of the diffraction data reveals structural transition from rhombohedral phase (R3c) for x <= 0.10 to orthorhombic phase (Pnma) for x=0.20. Room temperature M-H hysteresis measurements reveal that magnetization increases due to the structural distortion and partial destruction of spin cycloid caused by co-doping in BiFeO3 ceramics. FT-IR spectra exhibit broad absorption bands, which may be due to the overlapping of Fe-O and Bi-O vibrations in FeO6 octahedra of these ceramics. UV-visible spectroscopy results show strong absorption of light in the spectral range of 480-640 nm, indicating optical band gap in the visible region for these samples. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.