The conductivity of strong electrolytes from stochastic density functional theory

Vincent Démery (1) , David S. Dean (2)

1 LPCT - Laboratoire de Physico-Chimie Théorique
2 LOMA - Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine

Stochastic density functional theory is applied to analyze the conductivity of strong two species electrolytes at arbitrary field strengths. The corresponding stochastic equations for the density of the electrolyte species are solved by linearizing them about the mean density of ionic species, yielding an effective Gaussian theory. The non-equilibrium density-density correlation functions are computed and the conductivity of the electrolyte is deduced. In the bulk, our results give a simple derivation of the results of Onsager and coworkers who used very different methods. The method developed here can also be used to study electrolytes confined in one and two dimensions and interacting via either the three dimensional Coulomb interaction or the Coulomb interaction corresponding to that dimension of space.

Mots clés: correlation functions; transport processes/heat transfer (theory); ionic liquids; electrolyte solutions; liquid metals and charged fluids (experiments)

Domaines: Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]

Vincent Démery, David S. Dean. The conductivity of strong electrolytes from stochastic density functional theory. Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2016, 2016 (2), pp.023106 (1-16). ⟨10.1088/1742-5468/2016/02/023106⟩. ⟨hal-01283991⟩