A Nonlocal Poisson-Fermi Model for Ionic Solvent

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-type kernel function. Moreover, the Fermi distribution is shown to be a set of optimal ionic concentration functions in the sense of minimizing an electrostatic potential free energy. Finally, numerical results are reported to show the difference between a Poisson-Fermi solution and a corresponding Poisson solution.