Optical electronegativity and refractive index of materials

Simple correlations between the energy gap, optical electronegativity and the refractive index are given for various classes of materials such as semiconductors, insulators and oxides. There has been no report in the literature on the direct estimation of optical electronegativity for the wide variety of materials using energy gap values. The present method performance is compared with Moss and Ravindra's relationships. A simple analysis on the average percentage deviation for low and high n value materials is also presented. The average percentage deviation in the present approach reveals that the method proposed proves its identity and soundness compared to that of Moss and Ravindra's relationships. A good agreement is observed between the computed and literature values of refractive indices. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.