A singularly perturbed nonlinear Poisson–Boltzmann equation: uniform and super‐asymptotic expansions
Klemens Fellner, Victor A. Kovtunenko · Mathematical Methods in the Applied Sciences · 2015
A steady‐state Poisson–Nernst–Planck system is investigated, which is conformed into a nonlinear Poisson equation by means of the Boltzmann statistics. It describes the electrostatic potential generated by multiple concentrations of ions in a heterogeneous (porous) medium with diluted (solid) particles. The nonlinear elliptic problem is singularly perturbed with the Debye length as a small parameter related to the electric double layer near the solid particle boundary. For star‐shaped solid particles, we prove rigorously that the solution of the problem in spatial dimensions 1d, 2d and 3d is uniformly and super‐asymptotically approximated by a constant reference state. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.