Parallel Combination of Inner Capacitance and Ionic Capacitance, Apparently Inconsistent with Stern’s Model

• Main Authors: Koichi Jeremiah Aoki, Ridong He, Jingyuan Chen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Electrochem
• Subjects: dependence of capacitance on ionic concentrations; Stern model of double layer capacitance; capacitance by oriented dipoles and ionic hetero-concentrations; Poisson–Boltzmann distribution
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-3293/2/1/7

A double layer capacitance (DLC) has mainly been brought about in the Helmholtz layer rather than in the diffuse layer, as was demonstrated with the invariance of DLC to salt concentration, <i>c</i>, less than 0.5 M (M = mol dm⁻³) (Univ. J. Chem. 1 (2013) 162). The DLC measured here increased with concentrations of KCl and HCl solutions as high as 1 M at a platinum electrode by the ac impedance method. It was represented as a sum of the Helmholtz capacitance and the ionic one which had 0.7 power of the concentrations. The simple addition implies that the Helmholtz contribution and the ionic one should be represented by a parallel combination rather than a series one such as in the Stern model. The disagreement of the experimental values of the DLC with the Gouy–Chapman theory at high concentrations has been conventionally attributed to the effects of packing of ions over their sizes. In this paper, a model of avoiding the packing was introduced, in which ions were distributed in the direction normal to the electrode in the balance of electric motive force and the thermal energy, keeping the uniform distribution on a plane projected to the electrode. The energy balance was taken by using the grand canonical ensemble in statistical mechanics. The ionic contribution had a linear relation with the applied voltage rather than exponential dependence. When a series combination was applied to the Helmholtz capacitance and the ionic one under the condition of difference between the locally anionic DLC and the cationic one, we obtained approximately a parallel combination of the two capacitances because either the anionic or the cationic DLC works predominantly.