Nonlocal Poisson-Fermi model for ionic solvent

Phys Rev E. 2016 Jul;94(1-1):012114. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.94.012114. Epub 2016 Jul 12.

Abstract

We propose a nonlocal Poisson-Fermi model for ionic solvent that includes ion size effects and polarization correlations among water molecules in the calculation of electrostatic potential. It includes the previous Poisson-Fermi models as special cases, and its solution is the convolution of a solution of the corresponding nonlocal Poisson dielectric model with a Yukawa-like kernel function. The Fermi distribution is shown to be a set of optimal ionic concentration functions in the sense of minimizing an electrostatic potential free energy. Numerical results are reported to show the difference between a Poisson-Fermi solution and a corresponding Poisson solution.