Interplay between nitrogen dopants and native point defects in graphene

Hou, Z.*; Wang, X.*; Ikeda, Takashi; Terakura, Kiyoyuki*; Oshima, Masaharu*; Kakimoto, Masaaki*; Miyata, Seizo*

To understand the interaction between nitrogen dopants and point defects in graphene, we have studied energetic stability of N-doped graphene with vacancies and Stone-Wales defect by performing the density functional theory calculations. Our results show that N substitution energetically prefers to occur at the carbon atoms near the defects, especially for those sites with larger bond shortening, indicating that the defect-induced strain plays an important role in the stability of N dopants. In the presence of mono-vacancy, the most stable position for N is the pyridine-like configuration while for other point defects studied N prefers a site in the pentagonal ring. While the N doping is endothermic in defect-free graphene, it becomes exothermic for defective one. Our results imply that the point defect and N dopant attract each other, which means that substitutional N dopants would increase the probability of point defect generation and vice versa.