Influence of isoelectronic impurities on the electronic structure of BN nanotubes

Via the example of a (5, 5) boron-nitrogen armchair nanotube, the influence of isoelectronic substitutional impurities on the electronic structure of BN nanotubes has been investigated with the use of linear augmented cylindrical waves. The treatment is based on the local density approximation and the muffin-tin approximation for the electron potential. In this method, the electronic spectrum of a system is governed by the free motion of electrons in the interatomic space between cylindrical barriers and the electron scattering on atomic centers. It has been found that the substitution of one atom of N by P leads to the splitting of all twofold degenerate bands by 0.2 eV on average, a decrease in the energy gap from 3.5 to 2.8 eV, the separation of the $s$(P) band from the high-energy region of the $s$(B, N) band, as well as to the formation of the impurity $\pi$(P) and $\pi^*$(P) bands, which form the valence-band top and conduction-band bottom in the doped system. The influence of an As atom on the electronic structure of (5, 5) BN nanotubes is qualitatively similar to the case of phosphorus, but the energy gap is smaller by 0.5 eV. The optical gap in the nanotubes is closed due to the effect of the Sb atom impurity. A substitution of one B atom by an Al atom results in the strong perturbation of the band structure and the energy gap in this case is only 1.6 eV in contrast to the weak indium-induced perturbation of the band structure of the BN nanotube. In the latter case, the energy gap is 2.9 eV. The above effects can be detected by the optical and photoelectron spectroscopy methods, as well as by measuring the electrical properties of the nanotubes. They can be used to create electronic devices based on boron-nitrogen nanotubes.