Chemical doping with foreign atoms offers a practical path to modify the properties of host materials.
Among them, nitrogen-doping plays an important role in regulating the electronic and mechanical
properties of carbon-based materials. In the present study, density functional theory calculations are
performed to predict the relative reactivities of different sites on the external surface of pristine and
nitrogen-doped BC3 nanotubes (BC3NTs). The properties determined include the electrostatic potential
VS(r) and average local ionization energy ĪS(r) on the surfaces of the investigated tubes. It is revealed that
doping BC3NTs with N impurity can significantly improve the tube's surface reactivity and it allows their
surface properties to be controlled. There is an obvious increase in the magnitude of VS(r) minima for all
the BC3 doped with N atom, compared to the pristine one. There is a good correlation between
chemisorption energies and average local ionization energies, indicating that ĪS(r) provides an effective
means for rapidly predicting the relative reactivities of finite-sized BC3NTs. These results could be useful
for designing and developing metal-free catalyst based on N-doped BC3NTs