CARBON-SUBSTITUTING IN (4,4) BORON NITRIDE NANOTUBE: DENSITY FUNCTIONAL STUDY OF BORON-11 AND NITROGEN-14 ELECTRIC FIELD GRADIENT TENSORS

Abstract

Density functional theory (DFT) study is performed to investigate the influence of carbon substituting in a representative model of armchair boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs). To this aim, the electric field gradient (EFG) tensors at the sites of11B and11N nuclei are calculated in two models of (4,4) single-walled BNNT. Model one (raw) consists of 36 B and 36 N atoms with 12 saturating H atoms of two mouths while 7 B and 7 N atoms are substituted by 14 C atoms like a wire in model two ( C -substituted). The converted EFG tensors to measurable nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) parameters, quadrupole coupling constant (CQ) and asymmetry parameter (ηQ), reveal that the CQvalues in the length of raw BNNT are divided into some layers with equal magnitude and among them the mouth layers have the largest CQmagnitudes. In the C -substituted model, in addition to the mouth layers, the CQof those B and N nuclei directly bonded to C atoms are increased to the magnitudes as large as those mouth nuclei meaning that the active sites are increased in the C -substituted BNNT model. It is worth noting that the NQR parameters of other nuclei rather than those directly bonded to C and also those in the first neighborhood of C atoms are almost in equal values in the two models. Comparing the results with a recent study on zigzag BNNT (Mirzaei M et al., Z. Naturforsch A62:56, 2007) reveals that armchair and zigzag BNNTs show almost similar electronic properties. However, there is a significant difference in the electronic properties of those B and N atoms located at the mouth of the two BNNTs whose mouths are similar in armchair, whereas there are two different mouths ( B -mouth and N -mouth) in zigzag BNNT.