Growth and characterization of a novel organic nonlinear optical material: l-alanine 2-furoic acid

l-alanine 2-furoic acid (LA2FA), a novel organic third order nonlinear optical material was grown by slow solvent evaporation technique at room temperature. The grown single crystals were characterized by XRD, spectral, thermal, optical, dielectric and third order nonlinear properties. LA2FA crystallizes into triclinic system with the space group P1. The cell parameters are found to be a = 3.97 Å, b = 7.09 Å, c = 10.69 Å, α = 73.61°, β = 83.57°, γ = 84.21° and V = 286 Å3. The modes of vibrations of different molecular groups present in LA2FA were identified by FTIR studies. The optical transparency of the grown crystals was investigated by UV–visible spectrum. The absorption spectrum reveals that the crystal has a high UV cut off of 245 nm and photonic band gap of 2.5 eV. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) study has been carried out to determine the surface morphology of the grown crystal. The thermal behavior of the crystal investigated using thermo gravimetric (TG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA) indicates that the material does not decompose before melting. The third order NLO property was studied in detail by z-scan technique.