Time-space bi-fractional drift-diffusion equation for anomalous electrochemical transport

Abstract

The Debye-Falkenhagen differential equation is commonly used as a mean-field macroscopic model for describing electrochemical ionic drift and diffusion in dilute binary electrolytes when subjected to a suddenly applied potential smaller than the thermal voltage. However, the ionic transport in most electrochemical systems, such as electrochemical capacitors, permeation through membranes, biosensors and capacitive desalination, the electrolytic medium is interfaced with porous, disordered, and fractal materials which makes the modeling of electrodiffusive transport with the simple planar electrode theory limited. Here we study a possible generalization of the traditional drift-diffusion equation of Debye and Falkenhagen by incorporating both fractional time and space derivatives for the charge density. The nonlocal (global) fractional time derivative takes into account the past dynamics of the variable such as charge trapping effects and thus subdiffusive transport, while the fractional space derivative allows to simulate superdiffusive transport.