Synthesis and high pressure Raman study of YCrO3 and SmCrO3

RCrO3 where R=Rare earth elements, have recently gained huge interest because of their multiferroic properties and various commercial application in solid fuel cells and as sensors. The electric and magnetic properties in these materials is dependent on the inter atomic distances and interaction. High pressure can tune the inter atomic interaction by drastically reducing the volume of the sample. We have carried out a comparative study of high pressure Raman measurements on YCrO3 and SmCrO3, where Y is non magnetic and Sm is magnetic. We observed disappearance of modes at around 24 GPa for YCrO3 whereas few modes disappeared as well as new modes appeared for SmCrO3. Anomalous behavior of FWHM at around 10 GPa was observed in both Y CrO3 and SmCrO3 suggesting an electronic topological transition in the systems.