Ionic atmosphere symmetrical electrolytes

The theory of Debye and Hiickel started from the assumption that strong electrolytes are completely dissociated into ions, which results, however, in electrical interactions between the ions in such a manner that a given ion is surrounded by a spherically symmetrical distribution of other ions mainly of opposite charges, the ionic atmosphere. The nearer to the central ions the higher will be the potential U and the charge density the limit of approach to the central ion is its radius r = a. 

For 1 1 electrolytes the simplest choice for n is unity (as in Figure lb) and is shown to be appropriate by comparison with experiment. Thus we have n = 1, X = 1 (cos 0i = 1, 0i = 0), and can take any value, since m = 0 and does not depend on (p. Variants of Equation 39 are easily obtained for other than uni-univalent salts by choosing a structure for the reduced ionic atmosphere in the light of symmetry and chemical intuition. This is illustrated with reference to the divalent ion of a 1 2 electrolyte, where it is reasonable as a first approximation to suppose that the ionic cloud will have two diametrically opposed maxima, each at a distance 1 /k from the reference ion. It is easy to see that dipoles induced on the central ion by these two charge centers will cancel, as well all higher terms of odd Z, but that quadrupolar effects (Z = 2) and other terms of even Z will not. For the structure factor the coordinates of the two maxima in dq are 0i = 0 and 02 = 7r, while the atmosphere is still symmetrical with respect to the angular coordinate [Pg.211]

The theory for flat surfaces and symmetrical electrolytes has been given by Gouy and Chapman and we shall refer to it as Gouy-Chapman (GC) theory. The theory antedates Debye-Huckel (DH) theory for ionic atmospheres (sec. 1.5.2a) by about two decades and is based on the same premises, viz. 

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