Autonomous self-healing organic crystals for nonlinear optics

Saikat Mondal, Pratap Tanari, Samrat Roy, Surojit Bhunia, Rituparno Chowdhury, Arun K. Pal, Ayan Datta, Bipul Pal () and C. Malla Reddy ()
Additional contact information
Saikat Mondal: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata
Pratap Tanari: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata
Samrat Roy: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata
Surojit Bhunia: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata
Rituparno Chowdhury: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata
Arun K. Pal: Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
Ayan Datta: Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
Bipul Pal: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata
C. Malla Reddy: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Non-centrosymmetric molecular crystals have a plethora of applications, such as piezoelectric transducers, energy storage and nonlinear optical materials owing to their unique structural order which is absent in other synthetic materials. As most crystals are brittle, their efficiency declines upon prolonged usage due to fatigue or catastrophic failure, limiting their utilities. Some natural substances, like bone, enamel, leaf and skin, function efficiently, last a life-time, thanks to their inherent self-healing nature. Therefore, incorporating self-healing ability in crystalline materials will greatly broaden their scope. Here, we report single crystals of a dibenzoate derivative, capable of self-healing within milliseconds via autonomous actuation. Systematic quantitative experiments reveal the limit of mechanical forces that the self-healing crystals can withstand. As a proof-of-concept, we also demonstrate that our self-healed crystals can retain their second harmonic generation (SHG) with high efficiency. Kinematic analysis of the actuation in our system also revealed its impressive performance parameters, and shows actuation response times in the millisecond range.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42131-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-42131-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42131-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().