| Summary: | Through ab initio based density functional theory calculations, we have investigated the electronic structure, stability and non-linear optical properties of a series of nitrogen substituted fullerenes (azafullerenes) with the general formula C60-2nN2n (n=1–12). For each system, we have considered different possible isomers and the minimum energy isomer is subjected to further detailed investigations. We have calculated different properties such as HOMO-LUMO gaps, vertical ionization potentials, vertical electron affinities, etc. to verify the stability of the considered fullerenes. From the Hessian calculations, it is observed that all the fullerenes are not only associated with real vibrational frequencies, but the minimum frequencies are also found to be considerably large which further confirms the stability of the considered fullerenes. We find that the presence of unperturbed C6 rings enhances the stability of the fullerene whereas, the -N-C-N- fragments are found to destabilize the structure. At lower doping concentration, the stabilization due to C6 is more predominant and as the doping concentration is increased, the destabilization due to nitrogen-nitrogen repulsion plays a more important role. Our calculated polarizability and hyperpolarizability parameters of C60 are found to be in good agreement with the earlier reported results. On nitrogen doping, considerable variation is observed in the non-linear optical coefficients, which can be helpful in designing new photonic devices.
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