Dissolved ions can alter the local permittivity of water, nevertheless most theories and simulations ignore this fact. We present a novel algorithm for treating spatial and temporal variations in the permittivity and use it to measure the equivalent conductivity of a salt-free polyelectrolyte solution. Our new approach quantitatively reproduces experimental results unlike simulations with a constant permittivity that even qualitatively fail to describe the data. We can relate this success to a change in the ion distribution close to the polymer due to the built-up of a permittivity gradient.
@article{arxiv.1509.03814,
title = {Importance of Varying Permittivity on the Conductivity of Polyelectrolyte Solutions},
author = {Florian Fahrenberger and Owen A. Hickey and Jens Smiatek and Christian Holm},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.03814},
year = {2015}
}