Effective electrodiffusion equation for non-uniform nanochannels

We derive a one-dimensional formulation of the Planck-Nernst-Poisson equation to describe the dynamics of a symmetric binary electrolyte in channels whose section is nanometric and varies along the axial direction. The approach is in the spirit of the Fick-Jacobs diffusion equation and leads to a system of coupled equations for the partial densities which depends on the charge sitting at the walls in a non-trivial fashion. We consider two kinds of non-uniformities, those due to the spatial variation of charge distribution and those due to the shape variation of the pore and report one- and three-dimensional solutions of the electrokinetic equations. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.