Growth, Characterization and NLO Property Study of Doped L-Alanine Crystal

L-Alanine (LA) is a promising nonlinear optical material from the amino acid category. The results of thorough deliberations on physiochemical and optical properties of pure and mixed forms of LA attracted many researchers. In this context, ammonium bromide added LA crystals were grown by solvent evaporation process and they were analyzed through various characterization tools. The orthorhombic crystal system and the slight intensity variation were noticed by diffraction studies. The vibrational lines of diverse functional groups and element identification were made by FT-IR and EDAX analysis, respectively. The optical properties were evaluated to witness the transparency to the visible light along with UV lower limiting wavelength of 245 nm. The surface topography and melting point were analyzed through SEM and thermal studies, respectively. Mechanical behavior was examined through hardness test. The crystal under study has shown improved second harmonic generation efficiency compared to pure LA as revealed by Kurtz powder method.