Crystal growth and investigation of novel semi organic single crystal: l-malic acid sodium nitrate for photonic applications

l-Malic acid sodium nitrate, a novel semi organic nonlinear optical crystal was grown from aqueous solution by slow evaporation method at room temperature. The cell parameters for the grown crystal were determined by using single crystal X-ray diffraction method. The different functional groups with different modes of vibrations were confirmed by FTIR spectral analysis. The optical absorption studies show that the crystal has wide optical transparency in the entire visible region. From UV absorption profile, the electronic optical band gap and Urbach energy is calculated as 5.0 eV and 0.1401 eV. The photoluminescence spectra exhibit different peaks to indicate the single transitional band structure and high purity of the grown crystal. The EDAX and SEM study shows the presence of elements in the grown crystal and growth of second layer over the surface. The second harmonic generation efficiency was confirmed by the Kurtz powder method using Nd:YAG laser with fundamental wavelength of 1064 nm. DSC study shows that the grown crystal was thermally stable up to 273 °C. The dielectric behavior of the grown crystal was measured in the frequency range 50 Hz–5 MHz at different temperatures. The Vickers micro hardness studies were carried out on the grown crystals and there by Vickers hardness number (Hv) and work hardening coefficient (n) were calculated.