Unidirectional organic nonlinear optical L-arginine maleate dihydrate (LAMD) single crystal has been successfully grown by the Sankaranarayanan-Ramasamy (SR) method. The SR as-grown crystal was transparent and the size was 65 mm in length and 15 mm in diameter. The grown LAMD crystals have been subjected to single crystal X-ray diffraction, high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD), piezoelectric, dielectrics, UV-vis-NIR, Vickers microhardness and second harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency study and the results were discussed. The lattice parameters of the grown LAMD crystal are confirmed by single crystal X-ray diffraction and the morphology is investigated in the conventional grown LAMD crystal. Crystalline perfection is observed from HRXRD analysis. Piezoelectric charge coefficients of the grown crystal have been determined. The dielectric constant and loss measurement were made as function of temperature in the range between 40 and 140 degrees C. The improved transparency of the grown crystal is investigated by recording UV-vis analysis. Microhardness measurements reveal that the mechanical strength of the SR-grown LAMD crystal is higher than the that of the conventional method grown crystal. SHG measurements indicate that the SHG efficiency of the grown LAMD crystal at a fundamental wavelength of 1064 nm is roughly 1.4 times that of KDP. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.