Growth and characterization of 4-methyl benzene sulfonamide single crystals

•4-Methyl benzene sulfonamide (4MBS) is pharmaceutical and NLO material.•4MBS, a third order NLO material are used as optical emitting and switching devices.•4MBS has large optical transmittance in the wavelength region 250–1200 nm.•The band gap energy is 5.09 eV. 4MBS is a dielectric due to wide band gap.•The material is thermally stable up to 141.1 °C without weight loss.

Single crystals of 4-methyl benzene sulfonamide (4MBS) were successfully grown from aqueous solution by low temperature solution growth technique. The grown crystal was characterized by single crystal XRD and powder XRD methods to obtain the lattice parameters and the diffraction planes of the crystal. UV–vis–NIR absorption spectrum was used to measure the range of optical transmittance and optical band gap energy. The optical transmission range was measured as 250–1200 nm. FTIR spectral studies were carried out to identify the presence of functional groups in the grown crystal. The thermal behavior of the crystal was investigated from thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) study. The absence of SHG was noticed by Kurtz and Perry powder technique. The third order NLO behavior of the material was confirmed by measuring the nonlinear optical properties using Z-scan technique and it was found that the crystal is capable of exhibiting saturation absorption and self-defocusing performance.