Charge transfer and electronic doping in nitrogen-doped graphene

Understanding the modification of the graphene’s electronic structure upon doping is crucial for enlarging its potential applications. We present a study of nitrogen-doped graphene samples on SiC(000[Image: see text]) combining angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The comparison between tunneling and angle-resolved photoelectron spectra reveals the spatial inhomogeneity of the Dirac energy shift and that a phonon correction has to be applied to the tunneling measurements. XPS data demonstrate the dependence of the N 1s binding energy of graphitic nitrogen on the nitrogen concentration. The measure of the Dirac energy for different nitrogen concentrations reveals that the ratio usually computed between the excess charge brought by the dopants and the dopants’ concentration depends on the latter. This is supported by a tight-binding model considering different values for the potentials on the nitrogen site and on its first neighbors.