A continuum study of ionic layer analysis for single species ion transport in coaxial carbon nanotubes

Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University - Nanshan District Shenzhen, Guangdong 518060, PRC

^(a) unimelbat@hotmail.com

Received: 23 May 2020
Accepted: 1 August 2020

Abstract

In this letter, we employ the Poisson-Nernst-Planck equation and the continuum molecular model to investigate the ionic layers formation in coaxial carbon nanotubes, which are crucial for understanding the ion transport in nanomaterials, as well as modern solar cells and batteries. Owing to the curvature of nanotubes and the strong ion-nanotubes interactions, our simulations show that stable ionic multi-layers can always be formed inside nanotubes under a wide range of external electric fields and operating temperatures. Approximate solutions have also been deduced to support our numerical results. Most importantly, our hybrid model enjoys rapid and efficient computational times and hence fluid flow, conductivity and VI curve can be extracted almost instantaneously, which opens up a new research direction for the ion transport in nanomaterials.