Analysis of the Mean Field Free Energy Functional of Electrolyte Solution with Nonhomogenous Boundary Conditions and the Generalized PB/PNP Equations with Inhomogeneous Dielectric Permittivity

Abstract

The energy functional, the governing partial differential equation(s) (PDE), and the boundary conditions need to be consistent with each other in a modeling system. In electrolyte solution study, people usually use a free energy form of an infinite domain system (with vanishing potential boundary condition) and the derived PDE(s) for analysis and computing. However, in many real systems and/or numerical computing, the objective domain is bounded, and people still use the similar energy form, PDE(s), but with different boundary conditions, which may cause inconsistency. In this work, (1) we present a mean field free energy functional for the electrolyte solution within a bounded domain with either physical or numerically required artificial boundary. Apart from the conventional energy components (electrostatic potential energy, ideal gas entropy term, and chemical potential term), new boundary interaction terms are added for both Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions. These new terms count for physical...