Electronic and magnetic properties of single-layer graphene doped by nitrogen atoms

Graphene has vast promising applications on the nanoelectronics and spintronics because of its unique magnetic and electronic properties. Making use of an ab initio spin-polarized density functional theory, implemented by the Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof 06 hybrid functional method, abbreviated as HSE06, the properties of semi-metal nitrogen-substitutional graphene are investigated. From our investigations, we conclude that introducing nitrogen doping would possibly perform the spin symmetry breaking, resulting energy degeneracy at some doping configurations. The spin symmetry breaking would cause spin-polarized effects, which induce magnetic response in graphene. This paper systematically analyzes the dependence of magnetic moments and band gaps in graphene on nitrogen-substitutional doping configurations.