Ferromagnetism of MnO anchored on graphene with N dopant

•MnO anchored on graphene with N dopants has been synthesized.•MnO samples with N dopants exhibit obvious intrinsic room temperature ferromagnetism.•It is revealed that the ferromagnetism originates from the double-exchange interaction between Mn atoms through N dopants. MnO is a well-known antiferromagnetic transition mental oxide with a wide band gap, the lack of intrinsic ferromagnetism limits its applications in spintronics. Hence, in order to expand the application field of MnO and especially explore the existence of ferromagnetism, we experimentally achieve the N-doped MnO anchored graphene. As is expected, the MnO-based samples exhibit obvious intrinsic room temperature ferromagnetism, which is dependent on the N dopant concentration. Further, density functional theory (DFT) results reveal that the spontaneous magnetization comes from the ferromagnetic double-exchange interaction between Mn atoms with the aid of N dopants.