Growth, characterizations and nonlinear optical studies of dimethylamine substituted anthracene chalcone single crystals

We report the structural, thermal, linear and nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of a newly grown anthracene based chalcone single crystal, (2 E )-1-(anthracen-9-yl)-3-[4-(dimethylamino)phenyl]prop-2-en-1one (abbreviated as DA-ANC ). The chalcone was synthesized by Claisen-Schmidt condensation reaction and the single crystals were grown by slow evaporation of solution growth technique. Single-crystal XRD, NMR ( 1 H & 13 C), FT-IR, UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopies, TG/DTA, and computational DFT studies were performed to characterize the crystals. The intermolecular interactions were described by Hirshfeld surface analysis (HSA). The third-order NLO properties of DA-ANC were studied by Z-scan technique using CW-DPSS laser at 532 nm. Open aperture Z-scan exhibits strong two-photon assisted reverse saturation absorption (RSA) with two-photon absorption (TPA) coefficient ( ,B) 6.9 x 10 -5 cmW -1 . Closed aperture Z-scan reveals the negative nonlinear refraction arising due to self-defocusing effect with nonlinear refractive index ( n 2 ) coefficient -1.31 x 10 -8 cm 2 W -1 . The optical limiting behavior based on TPA was performed and limiting-threshold was evaluated to be 6.47 kJ cm -2 . The obtained one-photon and twophoton figures of merit satisfied the conditions of all-optical switching. The results show that DA-ANC can be a potential candidate for NLO applications.