Growth Aspects of Semi-Organic Nonlinear Optical L-Theronine Lithium Bromide Single Crystals

Single crystals of L-theronine lithium bromide (LTLB), a semi-organic NLO material have been grown from aqueous solution by the slow evaporation method. The grown crystals were transparent and was subjected to the following characterization studies. The lattice parameters of the grown crystals were determined by the single-crystal X-ray diffraction technique. The grown crystals were also characterized by recording the powder X-ray diffraction pattern and by identifying the diffraction planes. FTIR studies are performed to identify the presence of various functional groups in the grown crystal. Ultraviolet-visible spectral analyses showed that the crystal has UV cut-off at 263 nm combined with good transparency in the entire visible region and the optical band gap was estimated to be 4.1 eV. The second harmonic generation relative efficiency of the grown crystals were observed to be 1.13 times that of potassium dihydrogen orthophosphate (KDP). Keywords: semi-organic NLO material, X-ray diffraction, FTIR, second harmonic generation