Abstract: Sodium paranitrophenolate dihydrate (NPNa∙2H2O) is an excellent semiorganic nonlinear optical (NLO) material, crystallizes both in water and methanol with high degree of transparency. Good optical quality single crystals of dimension upto 18 mm×6 mm×3 mm are obtained by sothermal solvent evaporation technique. The solubility of the crystal in different solvents was measured gravimetrically. The single crystals of NPNa∙2H2O show variation in physical properties and growth rate in different solvents. Methanol or ethanol solution yields crystals of bipyramidal shape with clear morphology. However, methanol grown crystal is exhibiting improved hardness parameters and possesses excellent thermal stability as compared to water grown crystals. The effects of solvent on hardness parameter along with thermal and optical properties of NPNa∙2H2O was revealed in this paper.

Key words: Solution grown crystals, Semiorganic NLO material, Solvent effect...