Atomic-scale characterization of nitrogen-doped graphite: Effects of dopant nitrogen on the local electronic structure of the surrounding carbon atoms

Abstract

We report the local atomic and electronic structure of a nitrogen-doped graphite surface by scanning tunnelling microscopy, scanning tunnelling spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and first-principles calculations. The nitrogen-doped graphite was prepared by nitrogen ion bombardment followed by thermal annealing. Two types of nitrogen species were identified at the atomic level: pyridinic-N (N bonded to two C nearest neighbours) and graphitic-N (N bonded to three C nearest neighbours). Distinct electronic states of localized π states were found to appear in the occupied and unoccupied regions near the Fermi level at the carbon atoms around pyridinic-N and graphitic-N species, respectively. The origin of these states is discussed based on the experimental results and theoretical simulations.

6 Pages, with larger figures

References in corpus (5)

• The SIESTA method for ab initio order-N materials simulation
• Efficient index handling of multidimensional periodic boundary conditions
• The missing atom as a source of carbon magnetism
• Anomalous Doping Effects on Charge Transport in Graphene Nanoribbons
• Coulomb Interactions and Ferromagnetism in Pure and Doped Graphene

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Electronic Structures of N-doped Graphene with Native Point Defects
• Nitrogen-doped graphene based triboelectric nanogenerators
• Ferromagnetism in nitrogen doped graphene
• Electronic structure of vacancy resonant states in graphene: a critical review of the single vacancy case
• Atomistic Mechanisms of Codoping-Induced p- to n-Type Conversion in Nitrogen-Doped Graphene
• Inverse scattering for Schrödinger operators on perturbed lattices