Magneto-electronic property and strain regulation for non-metal atom doped armchair arsenene nanotubes

Abstract

For the development of high performance magnetic devices, inducing magnetism in non-magnetic materials and flexibly regulating their magneto-electronic properties are very important. According to the density functional theory (DFT), we systematically study the structural stability, magneto-electronic properties, carrier mobility and strain effect for each of armchair arsenene nanotubes doped with non-metallic atoms <i>X</i> (<i>X</i> = B, N, P, Si, Se, Te). The calculated binding energy and formation energy confirm that the geometric stability of AsANT-<i>X</i> is high. With non-metal doping, each of AsANT-<i>X</i> (<i>X</i> = B, N, P) acts as a non-magnetic semiconductor, while each of AsANT-<i>X</i> (<i>X</i> = Si, Se, Te) behaves as a bipolar magnetic semiconductor, caused by the unpaired electrons occurring between X and As. Furthermore, by doping, the carrier mobility of AsANT-<i>X</i> can be flexibly moved to a wide region, and the carrier polarity and spin polarity in mobility can be observed as well. Especially, AsANT-Si can realize a transition among bipolar magnetic semiconductor, half-semiconductor, magnetic metal, and non-magnetic metal by applying strain, which is useful for designing a mechanical switch to control spin-polarized transport that can reversibly work between magnetism and demagnetism only by applying strain. This study provides a new way for the application of arsenene.