Enhanced Electrical, Optical and Thermodynamics Proprieties of Pr0.5Ce0.5CoO3 Cobaltite Prepared Using Sol–Gel Route for Electrical and Optical Applications

In this work, the new polycrystalline Pr0.5Ce0.5CoO3 was successfully synthesized by sol–gel process. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis reveals that the prepared sample is well crystallized in the orthorhombic structure with the Pnma space group. The electrical conductivity analyses indicates that Pr0.5Ce0.5CoO3 has a semiconducting behavior. Nyquist plots were studied show a monotonic decrease in grain resistance (Rg) and grain boundary resistance (Rgb) with increasing temperature. This result confirms that the transport mechanism in the Pr0.5Ce0.5CoO3 cobaltite is governed by the effect of grain boundaries. The synthesized material exhibits a good dc electrical resistivity. These results suggests that the Pr0.5Ce0.5CoO3 perovskite is an excellent choice for microwave devices. Moreover, the prepared sample is able as photo-catalysis material and generate for photovoltaic solar cell because its absorbance values are higher in the visible range. From the absorbance curve, it’s apparent that the direct band gap energy for our sample was obtained as Egd = 2.637 eV. The obtained Eu value for our sample in the order of 0.312 eV, which indicated that the Pr0.5Ce0.5CoO3 cobaltite has a low disorder.