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East Afr. J. Biophys. Comput. Sci. (2022), Vol. 3, Issue. 2, 61-67 
 

 

 

 

*Corresponding author: 

  Email: zabishwork2@gmail.com,  +251 947347121 https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/eajbcs.v3i2.1S 

 
 

 

 

Dessale Alemu1, Idris Shafi2, Tizazu Abza*2 

1Woldia University, Department of Physics, Woldia, Ethiopia 

2Hawassa University, Department of Physics, Hawassa, Ethiopia 

 

 

 

KEYWORDS:  

Solution method; 

Doping; 

Crystal Growth;  

Harmonic generation; 

Nonlinear optics 

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

The aim of this research was to synthesize and characterize pure and magnesium chloride 

(MgCl2) doped L–alanine cadmium chloride (LACC) single crystals. Pure and MgCl2 

doped LACC single crystals were synthesized by solution method with slow evaporation 

solution growth technique at room temperature. The single crystal X-ray diffraction 

studies of pure, 1 and 2 mol% MgCl2 doped LACC single crystals revealed monoclinic 

crystal structure with C2 space group. The optical properties of pure and MgCl2 doped 

LACC single crystals investigated by UV–VIS/NIR spectrometer confirmed that the 

crystals were transparent in the wavelength range of 230-1100 nm. The optical band gap 

energy of pure and doped LACC single crystals were found to have the same value of 5.4 

eV. The energy dispersive X-ray analysis indicated the incorporation of magnesium and 

chlorine atoms in LACC single crystal. The second harmonic generation efficiency of 1 

and 2 mol% MgCl2 doped LACC crystals were analyzed by Kurtz-Perry powder technique 

and found to be 1.75 and 2 times greater than that of the standard potassium dihydrogen 

phosphate crystal, respectively.  

  

 

INTRODUCTION 

The core attention of nonlinear optical (NLO) 

studies is to modify the phase, frequency or 

amplitude of intense electromagnetic input field 

using NLO materials for photonic applications 

(Boyd, 2019). Nonlinear optical materials have 

been the subject of much research in recent 

years due to their potential uses on optical 

computing, laser technology, harmonic 

generation, optical communication, optical data 

storage technology, signal processing and 

manipulation. Therefore, currently there is a 

need to produce high efficiency single crystals 

of NLO materials (Marudhu et al., 2013; 

Raguram et al., 2016). Much attention has been 

paid to organic NLO materials due to their 

promising properties, such as fast optical 

response time and high nonlinearity, compared 

to the inorganic materials. The aggregate of 

materials which have large nonlinear optical 

properties with resistance to physical and 

East African Journal of Biophysical and Computational Sciences 

Journal homepage : https://journals.hu.edu.et/hu-journals/index.php/eajbcs 
 

Hawassa University

College of Natural & Computational Sciences

Year 2021

Volume xx No xx

 

Synthesis, Growth and Characterization of Magnesium Chloride Doped L-Alanine Cadmium 

Chloride Single Crystal: For Nonlinear Optical Application 

 
Research article

https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/eajbcs.v3i2.1S


East Afr. J. Biophys. Comput. Sci. (2022), Vol. 3, No. 2, 61-67 
 

62 

chemical attack has led to the investigation of 

semi-organic materials (Kaliammal et al., 2020). 

Amino acids are favorable organic materials 

displaying specific features of interest, such as 

molecular chirality which secures non-

centrosymmetric crystallographic structure, 

absence of strongly conjugated bonds which 

leads to wide transparency ranges in the visible 

and ultra-violet spectral regions and zwitter 

ionic nature of the molecule which favors 

crystal hardness for applications in devices 

(Natarajan et al., 2006; Raguram et al., 2016). 

L-alanine is an amino acid group that forms a 

chains of complexes upon reaction with 

different acids.  

Reports are available on L-alanine based NLO 

crystals such as: L-alanine cadmium chloride 

(Dhanuskodi et al., 2007), L-alanine acetate 

(Kumar et al., 2005), L-alanine Hydrogen 

chloride (Rose et al., 2010), L-alanine sodium 

nitrate(Fleck and Petrosyan, 2009), L-alanine 

potassium chloride (Prabha and Palaniswamy, 

2010) and L-alanine maleate (Karunanithi et al., 

2012). L-alanine cadmium chloride is an amino 

acid derivative NLO material with high second 

harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency and it 

crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system 

with non-centrosymmetric space group 

(Jothimani and Selvarajan, 2017; Radhika et al., 

2013). 

Few reports are available on the synthesis of L-

alanine cadmium chloride single crystals by 

solution growth method. As far as the authors 

are aware, there is no report on magnesium 

chloride doped L-Alanine cadmium chloride 

single crystals. Since doping can influence 

many of the useful  properties like, optical 

transparency, second harmonic generation 

(SHG), crystalline perfection which may in turn 

influence the physical properties depending on 

the degree of doping and the accommodating 

capability of the parent crystal (Shkir et al, 

2014). Magnesium chloride-doped L-alanine 

cadmium chloride single crystals were grown 

using slow evaporation, and their structural, 

optical, second-harmonic generation (SHG), and 

compositional properties were characterized. 

MATERIALS AND METHODS 

In this work, analytical grade L-Alanine (Sisco 

Research laboratories, 99%), cadmium chloride 

(Uni-CHEM, 99%) and magnesium chloride 

(Uni-CHEM, 98%) were used directly without 

further process. The parent compound was 

synthesized by taking an equimolar ratio of L-

alanine and cadmium chloride that is obtained 

by dissolving 8.0901 g L-Alanine and 22.8353 g 

cadmium chloride. The calculated amount of L-

alanine has been dissolved with distilled water 

in a beaker and placed on a magnetic hot plate 

regulated at 30°C then cadmium chloride was 

added. It has been stirred continuously for four 

hours to obtain hmgenous supersaturated 

solution. Afterwards the solution has filtered by 

using Whatman filter paper into a 500 m1 

beaker. The filtered solution has been kept free 

from dust and other contamination by covering 

it with porous cover so the rate of evaporation 

could be minimized. 1 mol% and 2 mol%   

MgCl2 doped L-Alanine cadmium chloride single 

crystals were synthesized by adding 2.0333 g 

and 4.0666 g MgCl2 into the parent compound 

solution respectively. A similar stirring process 

has been followed for 1 and 2 mol% of MgCl2 

doped L-alanine cadmium chloride. After a 

perid of 30 days, ptically clear transparent 

crystals were harvested from supersaturated 

solution. Accordingly, the grown pure, 1 and 2 



East Afr. J. Biophys. Comput. Sci. (2022), Vol. 3, No. 2, 61-67 
 

63 

mol%  MgCl2 doped LACC crystals were shown in Fig. 1. 

 

Fig. 1. Photograhp of (a) undoped, (b) 1 mol% MgCl2 doped and (c) 2 mol% MgCl2 doped LACC 

single crystals respectively. 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

Single crystal X-ray diffraction 

Single-crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis 

using a Bruker AXS Kappa APEXII 

diffractometer (Mo Kα radiation, λ = 0.07107 

nm) revealed that 1 and 2 mol% MgCl₂-dped 

LACC crystals adopted a monoclinic structure 

(with interaxial angles in a crystal lattice of α≈ β 

≈ 90° and γ ≈ 116.41°). The calculated lattice 

parameters (Å) were a = 16.282, b = 7.261, c = 

8.008 for 1 mol% and a = 16.286, b = 7.268, c = 

8.011 for 2 mol% MgCl₂ doping. The unit cell 

parameters and crystal structure for pure LACC 

crystal in (Å) were a = 16.298, b = 7.259, c = 

7.981 and monoclinic respectively as reported 

by other authors (Dhanuskodi et al., 2007). It is 

observed that both undoped and MgCl2 doped 

LACC crystals crystallize in same structure 

however, slight change in the lattice parameters 

were detected from the doped crystal compared 

to the pure LACC crystal. The changes in the 

lattice parameter may be due to the 

incorporation of MgCl2 in LACC crystal lattice. 

The grown crystals belongs to space group C2 

which is recognized as non-centrosymmetric, 

thus satisfying an essential material criteria for 

the SHG activity of the crystal (Fentaw et al., 

2019). 

UV–Vis NIR analysis 

To assess its optical properties, the transmission, 

cutoff wavelength, and band gap energy of the 

NLO single crystal were determined. In this 

study these optical parameters have been studied 

by using Perkin Elmer Lambda 35 UV-VIS-NIR 

spectrophotometer in the wave length range 

between l90-ll0 nm to cover near ultraviolet, 

visible and near IR regions. The recorded 

spectrums were shown in Fig.2.  

 



East Afr. J. Biophys. Comput. Sci. (2022), Vol. 3, No. 2, 61-67 
 

64 

 

 

Fig.2. Optical transmittance of pure, l and 2 mol % of   doped LACC crystals. 

From the spectrum it is detected that the crystals 

were transparent in the wavelength range 230 -

1100 nm. NLO materials can be of practical use 

only if they have a wide transparency range, 

thus the optical transmittance range of the 

grown crystals make them convenient materials 

for nonlinear optical applications (Ahlam et al., 

2013; Charoen-In et al., 2010). The result 

confirmed that the lower cutoff wavelength of 

the crystals were almost the same irrespective of 

the dopant concentration, however, the 

percentage of transmittances have increased for 

1mol% and 2 mol% MgCl2 doped LACC crystal. 

The increase in optical transmittance could be 

due the enhancement in the crystalline quality 

and absence of major defects as crystalline 

defect affect the optical properties (Jothimani 

and Selvarajan, 2017). The band gap energy was 

calculated using the relation Eg = 1240/λmin, 

where λmin is the cut-off wavelength of the light 

which is 230 nm  and it was found to be 5.4 eV 

for pure and doped crystals (Raguram et al., 

2016). 

Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) 

analysis 

Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) is 

a very useful instrument that used to identify the 

elemental composition of the samples. The 

incorporation of 1 and 2 mol% of MgCl2 into 

the crystal lattice of LACC was confirmed by 

JEOL-6390LV scanning electron microscope 

attached to EDX and it is shown in Fig.3. The 

EDX spectrum confirmed existance of expected 

elements such as oxygen, chlorine, magnesium 

and cadmium in both 1 and 2 mol% of MgCl2 

doped LACC crystal. The molecular weight and 

atomic percentage of identified elements in the 

doped NLO samples were presented in Table1. 

The measurable (quantitative) and qualitative 

EDX results clearly showed increase in the 

atomic percentage of Mg and Cl signifying 



East Afr. J. Biophys. Comput. Sci. (2022), Vol. 3, No. 2, 61-67 
 

65 

incorporation of the MgCl2 in the LACC single 

crystal structure.  

 

 

Fig. 3. EDX spectrum of 1 and 2 mol% of MgCl2 doped LACC crystals respectively.      

Table 1: Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis  

Elements 1mol%MgCl2+LACC 2mol%MgCl2 +LACC 

Weight% Atom% Weight% Atom% 

OK 74.28 91.19 62.49 82.57 

MgK 0.72 0.57 5.41 4.70 

ClK 10.20 5.65 16.38 9.77 

CdL 14.80 2.59 15.72 2.96 

Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 

 

Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) test  

The second harmonic generation efficiency 

analysis of the samples were carried out  by 

Kurtz-Perry powder technique by packing very 

fine powder of MgCl2 doped LACC sample in a 

microcapillary tube and a fundamental beam 

(1064 nm) from Nd-YAG laser was incident on 

the MgCl2 doped LACC crystals (Kushwaha et 

al., 2011). A second harmonic generated green 

light beam (532 nm) was emerged from the 

samples. To evaluate second-harmonic 

generation (SHG) properties, potassium 

dihydrogen phosphate (KH₂PO₄, KDP) powder 

was used as a standard reference material. The 

transmitted beam voltage through KDP was then 

measured to be 12 mV. In comparison, the 



East Afr. J. Biophys. Comput. Sci. (2022), Vol. 3, No. 2, 61-67 
 

66 

transmitted beam voltages through the 1 and 2 

mol% MgCl₂-doped LACC samples were 21 

mV and 24 mV, respectively. The SHG 

efficiency of the 1 and 2 mol% MgCl₂-doped 

LACC crystals was thus calculated to be 1.75 

and 2 times greater than that of the KDP 

reference material. The SHG efficiencies of 

pure LACC single crystal was 0.87 times greater 

than that of the standard KDP crystal reported 

by (Kalaiselvi et al., 2013). The enhancement of 

SHG efficiency may be either due to the 

improved in crystallinity or the change in 

electronic structure of LACC crystals due to the 

doping of MgCl2 (Bhagavannarayana and 

Kushwaha, 2010). The current results indicate 

that 1mol% and 2mol% MgCl2 doped LACC 

crystals are the better candidates for NLO 

applications than the undoped LACC single 

crystal. 

CONCLUSION 

Pure and MgCl₂-doped (1 and 2 mol%) LACC 

single crystals were grown by slow evaporation 

at room temperature. Characterization included 

single-crystal XRD (confirming a monoclinic 

structure, space group C2), UV-Vis-NIR 

spectroscopy (showing high transmission across 

the UV-Vis-NIR range, enhanced by MgCl₂ 

doping), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy 

(EDAX, confirming MgCl₂ incorporation), and 

second-harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency 

measurements (1.75× and 2× greater than KDP 

for 1 and 2 mol% doping, respectively). These 

results suggest that both pure and MgCl₂-doped 

LACC crystals are promising candidates for 

nonlinear optical applications. 

Acknowledgement 

We extend special thanks to the Department of 

Physics at University of Jammu and Amravati 

University (India) for allowing us to 

characterize our samples. 

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