Optical, thermal and mechanical properties of a novel bio-organic chlorophyll-b of Ficus religiosa added nickel sulphate hexahydrate crystal for NLO applications

[Display omitted] •Single crystals of chlorophyll-b doped NSHH were grown by slow evaporation growth technique.•The lower cut off wavelength is observed as at 210 nm.•Above 130–980 °C, in this range 70.58% total weight loss takes places.•The blue emission of the crystal was identified by photoluminescence spectral analysis.•The SHG efficiency of the as grown crystal is 0.21 times that of KDP. 1 mol% nickel sulphate hexahydrate (NSHH) and 0.5 mol% chlorophyll-b (Chl-b) of Ficus religiosa were grown by the slow evaporation method. The existence of disparate functional sets and the atomic and weight percentage of the as grown crystal(CHLBNSHH) were recognized by FTIR analysis and energy dispersive analysis spectrum (EDX), Optical band gap energy of the as grown CHLBNSHH crystals was studied using UV–Vis-NIR spectrum. Thermal analysis confirmed that the thermal stability of NSHH crystal is enhanced by the addition of Chl-b. The SHG efficiency is justified by the nonlinear optical behavior of grown crystal and thus leads to assuring chemical and physical applications in several materials.