Synthesis, growth and characterization of organic nonlinear optical material: N-benzyl-2-methyl-4-nitroaniline (BNA)

Synthesis of the organic nonlinear optical compound N-benzyl-2-methyl-4-nitroaniline (BNA) was carried out in a newer chemical environment using the mixture of benzyl chloride and 2-methl-4-nitroaniline by a preferred laboratory synthesis process. The synthesized BNA compound was separated by column chromatography (CC) with low pressure silica gell using petrollium benzine and purity of the separated resultant product was confirmed by thin layer chromatography (TLC). Further, the material was recrystallized atleast four times in methanol and the highly purified BNA was used for the growth of single crystals from solutions with selected solvents by slow evaporation method at room temperature. Single crystals having natural growth morphology were harvested and their different growth faces were identified by optical goniometry. The grown crystals were subjected to different characterization techniques such as powder x-ray diffraction (PXRD), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and UV-vis-Near IR spectroscopy. Further, the second harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency of the grown BNA crystal was studied by Kurtz and Perry powder technique using Nd:YAG laser as fundamental source and found to be twice that of inorganic standard KDP.