research papers J. Appl. Cryst. (2018). 51 https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600576718006386 1 of 8 Received 27 November 2017 Accepted 25 April 2018 Edited by G. Kostorz, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Keywords: chalcone derivatives; nonlinear optical materials; X-ray diffraction; z-scan technique; density functional theory (DFT). Supporting information: this article has supporting information at journals.iucr.org/j Crystal growth and characterization of second- and third-order nonlinear optical chalcone derivative: (2E)-3-(5-bromo-2-thienyl)-1-(4-nitrophenyl)prop- 2-en-1-one Parutagouda Shankaragouda Patil, a Shivaraj R. Maidur, a Mohd Shkir, b * S. AlFaify, b V. Ganesh, b Katturi Naga Krishnakanth c and S. Venugopal Rao c a Department of Physics, KLE Institute of Technology, Opposite Airport, Gokul, Hubballi 580030, India, b Advanced Functional Materials and Optoelectronic Laboratory (AFMOL), Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, King Khalid University, PO Box 9004, Abha 61413, Saudi Arabia, and c Advanced Centre of Research in High Energy Materials (ACRHEM), University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500046, India. *Correspondence e-mail: shkirphysics@gmail.com Experimental and computational studies of linear and nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of (2E)-3-(5-bromo-2-thienyl)-1-(4-nitrophenyl)prop-2-en-1-one (5B2SNC) single crystals are reported. Good-quality and large-sized single crystals of 5B2SNC were successfully grown and characterized by powder X-ray diffraction and high-resolution X-ray diffractometry techniques. 5B2SNC was found to crystallize in the monoclinic noncentrosymmetric space group Cc and possesses moderately good crystalline perfection. The linear optical properties were investigated using the absorption spectrum, which reveals a direct optical band gap of 3.1 eV. The thermal stability was studied with thermogravimetric analysis/differential thermal analysis. The powder second harmonic generation efficiency was evaluated by the Kurtz and Perry method, and 5B2SNC was found to be 26 times more efficient than urea standard. Third-order NLO properties were studied by the z-scan technique with a femtosecond laser. The second hyperpolarizability was obtained to be 1.45  10 31 e.s.u. The molecule reveals a strong reverse saturation absorption and negative nonlinear refraction. The molecule exhibited good optical limiting properties, and its limiting threshold was measured to be 3.2 mJ cm 2 . In addition, static electric dipole moments, linear polarizabilities, and first- and second-order hyperpolarizabilities were calculated by density functional theory (DFT). Highest occupied molecular orbital/lowest unoccupied molecular orbital band gaps were also evaluated by DFT calculations. The experimental and theoretical results showed that 5B2SNC exhibits excellent second- and third-order nonlinear optical properties. 1. Introduction Second- and third-order nonlinear optical (NLO) materials have a wide range of practical applications (Suresh & Arivuoli, 2012), such as optical limiting (Patil et al., 2015; Singh et al., 2014), optical data storage (A ˚ strand et al., 2000), terahertz wave generation (Krishnakumar & Nagalakshmi, 2008) and two-photon excited fluorescence microscopy (Ftouni et al., 2013). In such applications, organic NLO materials are more promising than inorganic materials (Boyd, 2003; Bosshard et al., 2001). Among the studied organic NLO materials, chalcone derivatives are attractive for their future use in NLO device functions like frequency conversion and optical limiting (Sunil Kumar Reddy et al. , 2014; Gu, Ji, Patil & Dharmaprakash, 2008; Ramkumar et al., 2013; D’silva et al., 2012a; Kiran et al., 2010). The presence of a carbonyl group, a ISSN 1600-5767 # 2018 International Union of Crystallography