Tuneable Resonance Properties of Graphene by Nitrogen-Dopant

Abstract

Doping as one of the popular methods to manipulate the properties of nanomaterials has received extensive application in deriving different types of graphene derivates, while the understanding of the resonance properties of dopant graphene is still lacking in literature. Based on the large-scale molecular dynamics simulation, reactive empirical bond order potential, as well as the tersoff potential, the resonance properties of N-doped graphene were studied. The studied samples were established according to previous experiments with the N atom’s percentage ranging from 0.38%-2.93%, including three types of N dopant locations, i.e., graphitic N, pyrrolic N and pyridinic N. It is found that different percentages of N-dopant exert different influence to the resonance properties of the graphene, while the amount of N-dopant is not the only factor that determines its impact. For all the considered cases, a relative large percentage of N-dopant (2.65% graphitic N-dopant) is observed to introduce significant influence to the profile of the external energy, and thus lead to an extremely low Q-factor comparing with that of the pristine graphene. The most striking finding is that the natural frequency of the defective graphene with N-dopant’s percentage higher than 0.89% appears larger than its pristine counterpart. For the perfect graphene, the N-dopant shows larger influence to its natural frequency. This study will enrich the current understanding of the influence of dopants on graphene, which will eventually shed lights on the design of different molecules-doped graphene sheet.