We investigate short-term non-linearity of solar irradiance fluctuations using the multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA). The MFDFA shows that time series of solar irradiance have a long range correlation function with a multifractal behavior. We apply this method to solar irradiance time series from several regions around the world with resolutions of seconds and minutes. The obtained generalized Hurst and Renyi exponents h(q) and tau(q) suggest the non-linear and non-stationary essence of measured irradiance time series. Also, we analyze shuffled, random phase, and rank-wised surrogated data to reveal the nature of the multifractality and conclude that linear and non-linear correlations are the dominant contributions to observed multifractal and non-linear behavior of solar irradiance. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.