Importance of Varying Permittivity on the Conductivity of Polyelectrolyte Solutions

Dissolved ions can alter the local permittivity of water, nevertheless most theories and simulations ignore this fact. We present a novel algorithm for treating spatial and temporal variations in the permittivity and use it to measure the equivalent conductivity of a salt-free polyelectrolyte soluti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2015-09
Main Authors: Fahrenberger, Florian, Hickey, Owen A, Smiatek, Jens, Holm, Christian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Computer simulation
Ion distribution
Permittivity
Polyelectrolytes
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Dissolved ions can alter the local permittivity of water, nevertheless most theories and simulations ignore this fact. We present a novel algorithm for treating spatial and temporal variations in the permittivity and use it to measure the equivalent conductivity of a salt-free polyelectrolyte solution. Our new approach quantitatively reproduces experimental results unlike simulations with a constant permittivity that even qualitatively fail to describe the data. We can relate this success to a change in the ion distribution close to the polymer due to the built-up of a permittivity gradient.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1509.03814