The crystal structures, band structures, density of states, charge density, overlap population and optical properties of pure anatase TiO2 and Pr-doped anatase TiO2 were studied by using the plane-wave pseudopotential method based on the first-principles. After Pr doping, the valence band and the conduction band moved down and became dense, energy gap became narrow and a impurity band which consists of Pr 4f states appeared. And the dipole moment got improved, which is good for the separate of the electron-hole pairs. These effectively overcome two huge shortcomings of TiO2. Besides, Pr-doped anatase TiO2 produced more carriers which have good transport properties and the absorption spectra of Pr-O bond appear in the region that the wavelength is longer. The calculation results of optical properties show that the absorption edge occured red shift, which means the photocatalytic activity of anatase TiO2 got remarkable improved during visible-light region. This conforms to the previous analysis. So the photocatalytic activity of anatase TiO2 got remarkable improved after Pr doping.
