Crystal growth, optical, thermal and dielectric properties investigation on cadmium chloride doped L-alanine P-toluene sulfonic acid single crystal for non-linear optical applications

A vibrant non-linear optical single crystal of cadmium chloride doped L-alanine p-toluene sulfonic acid (LAPTCd) was grown by slow evaporation. XRD analysis was carried out and obtained the cell parameter for the grown crystal. The grown LAPTCd crystal belongs to the orthorhombic crystal system with non-centro symmetric space group P 212121. The presence of the dopant was confirmed from an energy dispersive X-ray analysis. FT-IR and FT-Raman spectra were recorded and the presence of different functional groups and vibrations confirmed in the grown crystal. The UV–Vis–NIR absorption and transmittance spectrum shows that the crystal has a good optical transparency within the range 200–800 nm. The optical parameters have also been calculated, and it has a lower wavelength cutoff at around 235 nm. The optical energy band gap of the crystal was calculated from Tauc’s Plot and it is 5.24 eV. The fluorescence spectrum of the crystal reveals that the excitation wavelength is 489.97 nm. The thermal stability and the melting point of the crystal were analyzed by TG/DTA. The efficiency of second harmonic generation of the LAPTCd crystal is found to be 0.7 times more that of KDP crystal.