Magnetic and microwave absorbing properties of PrFeO3 ceramic prepared by different methods

To investigate the magnetic and microwave absorption properties of PrFeO3 ceramic, the traditional solid-state reaction and sol-gel methods were used. The results show that only an orthorhombic crystal structure was detected by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. Interestingly, heat treatment can greatly improve the coercivity of PrFeO3 ceramic and thus change the magnetic properties from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic. The high correlation between the magnetization parameters and bonding characteristics indi-cated that signifificant contracting of the Fe3+-Oc2-bonds and decrease in Fe3+-Od2--Fe3+ linkage angles were the main origins of the strong ferromagnetism in the PrFeO3 ceramic. The PrFeO3 sample prepared by sol-gel method has good reflection loss. When the simulated thickness is 2 mm, the reflection loss reaches-36.87 dB at 15.92 GHz. The preparation process of the sol-gel method is simple and can be used to synthesize single phase at low temperature, but it is only suitable for the synthesis and performance testing of single phase. The solid-state reation method can be used to determine the phase relationship and phase properties, but it requires high temperature and long annealing time. The experimental results show that the sol-gel method is more suitable for the study of material properties. These results demonstrate the potential application of PrFeO3 ceramics in magnetic materials and microwave absorbing field.