Modification of Bikerman model with specific ion sizes

Abstract Classical Poisson-Boltzman and Poisson-Nernst-Planck models can only work when ion concentrations are very dilute, which often mismatches experiments. Researchers have been working on the modification to include finite-size effect of ions, which is non-negelible when ion concentrations are not dilute. One of modified models with steric effect is Bikerman model, which is rather popular nowadays. It is based on the consideration of ion size by putting additional entropy term for solvent in free energy. However, ion size is non-specific in original Bikerman model, which did not consider specific ion sizes. Many researchers have worked on the extension of Bikerman model to have specific ion sizes. A direct extension of original Bikerman model by simply replacing the non-specific ion size to specific ones seems natural and has been acceptable to many researchers in this field.Herewe prove this straight forward extension, in some limiting situations, fails to uphold the basic requirement that ion occupation sites must be identical. This requirement is necessary when computing entropy via particle distribution on occupation sites.We derived a new modified Bikerman model for using specific ion sizes by fixing this problem, and obtained its modified Poisson-Boltzmann and Poisson-Nernst-Planck equations.