LAUSR

The classical-fluids density functional theory has been developed for studying the structural and the electrical properties of electrolyte solutions containing uniformly charged hard-spherical ions. The modified fundamental-measure theory has been used to evaluate the hard-sphere contribution. The mean-field approximation has been employed to calculate the cross correlation between the hard sphere contribution and the Coulomb interaction. The Poisson equation for ions carrying charges that are spatially separated has been solved. The present theory shows reasonably good agreement with the corresponding Monte Carlo simulation results. The calculated results show that the attraction between like-charged planar surfaces is the result of the intra-ionic correlation and depends strongly on the ion size, valence, mole fraction, and charge distribution of electrolytes.