Pure and urea-doped gamma-glycine (gamma-glycine) single crystals were grown by solution method with slow evaporation technique. When urea was added as dopant, morphological alterations were noticed in gamma-glycine crystals. Structural characterization of the grown crystals was carried out by single and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods and it is observed that the samples crystallize in non-centrosymmetric space groups. UV-visible transmittance studies were performed to analyse optical transparency of pure and urea-doped gamma-glycine crystals and found that the crystals were transparent in the entire visible-NIR region. Density and melting point of the grown crystals were measured. Second harmonic generation (SHG) for the grown crystals of this work was confirmed using Nd:YAG laser. Thermogravimetric and differential thermal analyses (TG/DTA) thermograms reveal that the materials have good thermal stability. From Microhardness studies, it is observed that urea-doped gamma-glycine crystal is harder than pure (undoped) sample. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.