Characterization of Pr-doped zircon by comparing hyperfine technique (PAC) and Rietveld refinement

Nowadays, some widely used inorganic pigments (vanadium blue, praseodymium yellow, and iron-coral pink) are based on ZrSi04 stoichiometry where the color is prevalently obtained by substitutional doping. This work deals with provided structural information on pure and praseodymium-doped zircon powders synthesized by the traditional ceramic route in order to evaluate the location of the dopant ion and the modification introduced in the zircon lattice. The information obtained by using the extremely localized perturbed angular correlation technique was compared with Rietveld structure refinement data. The kinetic of zircon pigment formation was followed by environmental scanning electron microscopy.