LAUSR

The ion distribution of an open parallel electrode system is not known even though it is often used to measure the electrical characteristics of an electrolyte. Thus, for an open electrode system, we perform a non-steady direct multiphysics simulation based on the coupled Poisson–Nernst–Planck and Stokes equations and find that inhomogeneous ion concentrations at edges cause vortex flows and suppress the anomalous increase in the ion concentration near the electrodes. A surprising aspect of our findings is that the large vortex flows at the edges approximately maintain the ion-conserving condition, and thus the ion distribution of an open electrode system can be approximated by the solution of a closed electrode system that considers the ion-conserving condition rather than the Gouy–Chapman solution, which neglects the ion-conserving condition. We believe that our findings make a significant contribution to the understanding of surface science.