Published August 2013 | Version v1
Journal article

Electrostatic attraction of charged drops of water inside dropwise cluster

  • 1. Tyumen State Oil and Gas University, 38, Volodarskogo Str., Tyumen 625000 (Russian Federation)
  • 2. The RAS Siberian Branch, The Institute of the Earth Cryosphere, P. O. 1230, Tyumen 625000 (Russian Federation)

Description

Based on the analytical solution of the Poisson-Boltzmann equation, we demonstrate that inside the electrically neutral system of charges an electrostatic attraction can occur between the like-charged particles, where charge Z ≫ 1 (in terms of elementary charge) and radius R > 0, whereas according to the literature, only repulsion is possible inside non-electrically neutral systems. We calculate the free energy of the charged particles of water inside a cluster and demonstrate that its minimum is when the interdroplet distance equals several Debye radii defined based on the light plasma component. The deepest minimum depth is in a cluster with close spatial packing of drops by type, in a face-centered cubic lattice, if almost all the electric charge of one sign is concentrated on the drops and that of the other sign is concentrated on the light compensation carriers of charge, where the charge moved by equilibrium carriers is rather small

Additional details

Identifiers

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physics of Plasmas
Journal Volume
20
Journal Issue
8
Journal Page Range
p. 083707-083707.5
ISSN
1070-664X
CODEN
PHPAEN

Optional Information

Notes
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