Potential and charge-carrier concentration distributions in solid electrolyte between flat electrodes

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze the equilibrium distribution of potential and charge carriers in solid electrolytes with flat electrodes, incorporating correlations and screening effects through advanced statistical methods.

Contribution

It introduces a new integral equation system accounting for near- and long-range interactions, and provides analytical and numerical solutions for charge and potential distributions in solid electrolytes.

Findings

Distribution of charges and potentials described by a fourth-order linear differential equation.

Correlation effects significantly influence charge distribution in solid electrolytes.

Analytical solutions align with numerical calculations for specific material characteristics.

Abstract

Statistically studied are the equilibrium characteristics of a subsystem of mobile charges of one sort, taking into account the subsystem of fixed charges of the opposite sign creating a compensating electric background. The distribution of these charges under the influence of the external field is invariable. To represent free energy of the subsystem of mobile charges in the form of a functional of their density and to calculate cell potentials of the mean forces by the method of conditional distributions, a cumulant expansion with respect to the renormalized Mayer functions is used. To take into account the screening effects, the results of the collective variables method are used. A system of integral equations for the potentials of mean forces is obtained that accounts for the effects of near- and long-range interactions. The calculations are made in the lattice approximation. The correlation component distinguished in the expression for the binary distribution function makes it possible to calculate the correlated and uncorrelated parts of the electric potential using the Poisson equation. In the case of sufficiently small electric fields, a linear expansion of the chemical potential in terms of deviation of the charge concentration from the homogeneous distribution is considered. In final calculations the correlation between particles is taken into account in the approximation of the first neighbors. In this approximation the potential and charge concentration distribution is described by a linear differential equation of the fourth order. The results of its analytical solution and subsequent numerical calculations for the characteristics of solid electrolyte are analyzed.