Investigation on the crystal growth, molecular structure and nonlinear optical susceptibilities of 2-[2-(4-Ethoxy-phenyl)-vinyl]-1-ethyl-stilbazolium iodide (EESI) by Z-scan technique using He-Ne laser for third-order nonlinear optical applications

Organic 2-[2-(4-Ethoxy-phenyl)-vinyl]-1-ethyl-stilbazolium iodide (EESI), a derivative of the stilbazolium family single crystal was synthesized by condensation method. Nearly perfect as-gown single crystals of EESI structure was confirmed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies. The crystal has a-triclinic system with the space group P-1, the molecule consists of one pyridinium cation, one iodide anion, and 0.5H(2)O molecules. The nature of charge transfer, molecular properties, electrostatic potential map, and HOMO-LUMO energy gap of EESI have been theoretically investigated by Sparton'10 V1.0.1 program. The optical transparency of EESI was studied by Uv-Visible spectral analysis. The growth features were observed during the etching studies using a Carl Zeiss optical microscope (50X magnification). The mechanical behavior of the crystal was estimated by Vickers microhardness test, which shows reverse indentation size effect (RISE) with good mechanical stability. Both the dielectric constant and dielectric loss increases with the increasing temperature and attain almost constant at higher frequencies, which justify the crystal quality and essential parameter for electro-optic device applications. The complex impedance analysis explains the electrical property of EESI. TGA and DTA measurements determined the thermal stability of the grown crystal. Laser-induced damage threshold energy measurements exhibit that the excellent resistance with good threshold energy up to 2.08 GW/cm(2) that was found to be more than that of some known organic and inorganic NLO crystals. Photoconductivity of EESI crystal confirms that the positive photoconductivity nature. Also, the third-order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of EESI were investigated by using the single beam Z-scan technique under the Visible light (632.8 rim) region. The results show that EESI has effective third-order nonlinear optical property with the nonlinear refractive index n(2) =1.787x10(-11)m(2)/W, third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility x((3)) =4.229x10(-6) esu and second-order hyperpolarizability (gamma) =1.468x10(-33) esu. It is found to be larger than that of some organic NLO materials. All the obtained results are making it a potential candidate as useful non-linear optical (NLO) applications.